Alasdair considered his image in the tall mirror. Jean considered him and his heather-blue tie, charcoal jacket, and tall socks with red flashes, all setting off the red and green Cameron kilt—not quite the red and green of Christmas, but then, tartan was appropriate for all seasons. “There may be something about a man in a uniform,” she said, “but there’s really something about a man in a kilt.”
“Kilts have been uniforms. See my dad and Fergus Mor.” He thrust the tiny traditional dagger, the sgian dubh, into the top of his sock, and double-checked the clasp on his kilt pin. “You had no call giving me an engagement gift.”
She fluttered her left hand toward him. “You gave me a diamond ring. Besides, I couldn’t resist that pin.” A silver dragon with a sapphire eye, it was just small enough not to be gaudy, otherwise he’d never wear it.
“Bonny Jean.” He took her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. Above the gleam of the diamond, heat lightning flickered in the depths of his own sapphire eyes, ones more changeable than the dragon’s. “That’s a lovely frock you’re wearing.”
“Thank you, dear.” Still holding his hand, Jean checked her mirrored self. Okay, she paled in magnificence next to him, the way a peahen paled next to a peacock. But still, the deep-crimson dress Miranda had talked her into buying looked good with her fair skin and auburn hair, and the necklace of chunky stones and twisted wires seemed both antique and contemporary. She might even hold her own next to Diana and Heather.
Her dress for the wedding waited in the wardrobe, sheathed in plastic and anticipation. It was a lovelier frock than her first wedding dress, which had been so stark a white she hadn’t been a blushing bride but a blanched one. She should have taken that as an omen.
As for whether she’d be wearing her second-time-around dress on schedule, she could use an omen, a sign, a portent—if she had a magic eight-ball she’d consult that too. At least she’d see Alasdair in his kilt tonight, even if they had to delay—not cancel, delay—the formalities and the celebration following.
“Penny for your thoughts,” said Alasdair, his fingers tightening on hers.
“I’m not going to start charging you for them now,” she replied.
“Worrying about the wedding, eh?”
“I don’t want a furtive ceremony and hushed voices. I don’t want to honeymoon under a cloud. We’ve done a lot of compromising, but I don’t want to compromise with this. Although we may have no choice.”
“You’re sounding like Nancy and her ‘we canna sort things to suit ourselves,’ not Bonny Jean the stubborn.”
“Stubborn, moi? Look who’s talking,” she retorted, and the little clock on the mantel struck five-forty-five.
With a smile and a last firm squeeze of her hand, Alasdair picked up her best beaded evening bag, just big enough for a pen and notepad, and draped it over her shoulder. “That’s us away, then.”
Having exhausted himself stalking and killing the two hackles, Dougie now slept soundly on the French gilt chair. “All he needs is a couple of footmen in white wigs delivering catnip,” Jean said.
Alasdair’s iron rod of an arm urged her out of the room and into the hall, where she eyed Seonaid’s tapestry. “Is it possible to deliberately choose ghosthood over going into the west, or the night, or wherever souls go? Given my druthers, I’d rather fade out and rest in peace than spend eternity searching for something I never attained in life.”
“Is it possible to choose—ghosthood, hah—for someone else, by not letting them go?”
“You’re thinking of Tormod and Seonaid? Although you’d think once Tormod was gone, Seonaid would go, too.”
“Habit.” Alasdair tucked the room key into his sporran and they strolled off down the corridor.
“With all that Fergie and Diana have had to deal with, they might prefer us being fashionably late,” Jean told him.
“I’m after having a proper chin-wag before the Krums arrive on the scene,” he returned.
“Well, yes, like how you weren’t far wrong guessing that Greg was after one of the crusader tombstones, when he was after something called a Crusader Coffer.” Jean paused at the tripping stane, and not only because she was now wearing shoes with dizzyingly tall one-inch heels. What she felt, though, wasn’t dizziness, just the delicate prickle, the cold press of something that was only abnormal, she supposed, because so few people were sensitive to it.
“You haven’t heard the Green Lady, Seonaid, wailing or anything, have you?” she asked.
“Warning of disaster? If she was carrying on about Tina’s falling from the window, I did not hear.” With a barely perceptible shudder, Alasdair walked on down the steps, his elbow angled in Jean’s direction should she trip over her own feet or feel the need to make a formal entrance on his arm. She confined herself to a light pat on the sleeve of his jacket.
They were walking through the entrance hall and its aroma of cooking food and a hint of smoke when Gilnockie and Young rounded the corner from the back hall. “Good evening,” Gilnockie said. Young exposed several teeth, then looked their finery up and down and folded her arms across her nondescript coat.
Jean and Alasdair rendered appropriate greetings, which included not commenting on how Gilnockie seemed grayer, graver, and more cadaverous than ever, as though he’d eaten nothing but ashes since his arrival at Dunasheen. “Hogmanay’s under way, then,” he said. “Lord Dunasheen’s been kind enough to ask us to join in the festivities . . .”
“Used to be,” muttered Young, “the lairds would be inviting their tenants.”
“. . . but with the lab boffins in Inverness missing out their holiday, we’re after doing no less. We’re away to Portree just now for a teleconference. And we’re hoping to interview Tina MacLeod.”
“She’s still in Portree, then,” Alasdair said.
“Aye, the concussion’s not so bad, the broken bone’s a simple fracture, and there are no internal injuries. She’s regained consciousness, though she’s not yet coherent.”
“Have you spoken with any of her and Greg’s relations in Australia?”
“It’s the morning of New Year’s Day there, no one’s answering the telephone. We’ll have another go as soon as may be.”
“Don’t worry about tomorrow,” said Jean. “It’s already tomorrow in Australia.”
Young turned a blank stare in her direction, then jerked back, blinking, at the electronic strains of “Take a Chance on Me.” Grabbing for her phone, she retreated several steps closer to the door and mumbled her half of a conversation.
“The chap in the photo,” Gilnockie went on, “looks like being Greg MacLeod’s father, right enough. Lord Dunasheen did not know that, or so he’s saying.”
The corners of Alasdair’s mouth tightened. But it was Gilnockie’s job to be skeptical.
“We’ve not yet worked out the ramifications,” Gilnockie went on, “though I doubt there are some.”
I suspect there are some, Jean translated automatically, even though she was the only outlander present. “I can see Kenneth senior throwing the shrimps onto the barbie and telling his sons about Scotland, land of their forefathers. Between his ancestors and his business, Greg had plenty of motivation to come here.”
“He did that.” Gilnockie went on, “Lord Dunasheen tells me this Sunday is your wedding day. May I be offering you both my best wishes for a long, happy life together?”
“Thank you,” said Alasdair, echoed by Jean. No need to repulse the man’s courtesy by adding provisos.
“Cheers.” Young snapped her phone shut and scowled down at her feet, turned somewhat pigeon-toed on the tile floor. “Portree’s reporting that Pritchard’s alibi is solid. He spent the day in a pub with a woman, and didn’t come away ’til four, after the murder.”
Oh. Damn. Jean had actually started to hope Pritchard was the guilty party. She didn’t want it to be a member of the household, for Fergie’s sake. Or Scott or Heather, for Dakota’s sake. Or Colin, for Diana’s sake. At least they had a stranger who could still qualify.
Alasdair said nothing. His face showed no expression. Beside the pleats of his kilt, his hands shut, opened, and shut again.
Gilnockie went, if possible, even more colorless. But he recovered his voice first. “Well then, I’ll relieve Thomson of sitting with Pritchard. His report was right helpful, by the way. W.P.C. McCrummin and P.C. Nicolson are going round to the area B&Bs, looking out the chap from the shop in Kinlochroy.”
“Here’s hoping he turns out to be the chap hanging about the night of the murder,” Alasdair said. “We’re having an interview of sorts with Fergie just now. If there’s anything . . .”
I think you should know, Jean finished for him.
“. . . I’ll be in touch,” Alasdair finished for himself.
Young fell into a walk toward the door. “They’ll have brought the car round.”
“Half a tick,” Gilnockie told her, and as she opened the door, “Alasdair, I’m thinking this is not a good way to end a career, leaving a case open.”
“It’s early days yet, Patrick.”
Yeah, it was still early. This could drag on for a long time. And Gilnockie, if anyone, knew how cases were more likely to be solved sooner rather than later, cold case dramas notwithstanding.
“Aye,” said Gilnockie. “Nil desperandum.”
Don’t despair. That was the message of the evening. The cold draft from the open door rippled Alasdair’s kilt and fluttered Jean’s dress. She stepped backward. Gilnockie made for the door. “Good night, then,” he called.
“Good night,” Alasdair and Jean both returned, and hurried on into the slightly warmer air of the hallway. The front door shut behind them.
In front of them, Nancy Finlay stood outside the half-closed door of the library, her dishtowel jerking over a picture frame.
Alasdair’s subtle expulsion of breath wasn’t quite a “hah!” but close. Nancy was eavesdropping. Without any embarrassment, though, she looked around, said, “Good evening to you,” and headed toward the kitchen.
Alasdair sent a scowl after her. Jean shook her head and shrugged—Miranda would say that eavesdropping was staff prerogative. From the narrow space between the library door and its jamb issued what Nancy had overheard, a strain of baroque music, violins soaring nervously.
And Fergie’s voice, with an odd blustery resonance. “. . . insurance alone, if we opened every day. And we’d need extra help, more facilities, more paperwork—planning permission, licensing inspections—when we’ve barely got time to deal with woodworm, dry rot, damp rot. The drains. Ice buildup in the gutters. We’re running as hard as we can to stay in the same place.”
“But simply selling the landscape’s become a cliché. And, considering the climate, an uphill job. We’re obliged to position ourselves as a destination for luxury short breaks, or a stop on diaspora tours, the descendants of emigrants rediscovering their roots.” Diana’s voice was cool and calm as the surface of Loch Ness, mirror-flat while a primitive form glided by below.
“Greg MacLeod was on a diaspora tour, looking out his ancestors.”
“He was on a buying trip as well, don’t forget that.”
“How could I?” asked Fergie. “Lionel’s saying there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I can’t agree. What sort of clientele will we attract now, I ask you?”
“And yet you’ve arranged for Jean to write about the Crusader Coffer and your related . . .” One beat, two, and Diana settled on, “. . . theories. What sort of clientele will you attract with those? I do so wish you’d wait until the police investigation has been finished. Circumstances are quite awkward enough without—”
“We’ve come too far to stop now,” Fergie interrupted.
Alasdair raised his hand to knock on the door, then, no doubt realizing how clumsy their sudden appearance would be, took several catfooted steps back down the hall. He beckoned to Jean, but she hesitated—there was eavesdropping, and then there was research. Besides this was the answer to more than what Diana and Fergie had been quibbling about on the staircase yesterday.
“We should organize concerts, then,” said Diana, “in addition to weddings, dinners, receptions. Living history, study tours, boat rides and wildlife tours on the loch. Craft or cooking weekends.”
“More facilities,” repeated Fergie. “Extra help. Rab and Nancy aren’t growing younger. Neither am I, come to that.”
“Colin could help.”
“Diana, please, I can’t deal with Colin Urquhart, not just now.”
“If you’d been willing to deal with him earlier . . . but no, we’re not speaking of him, are we?” Diana’s voice grew choppy. “You’ve dismissed taking out another loan to make the tenants’ cottages over into holiday homes—no, no, you’re quite right, we’d have only seasonal income from those. I could put it about that we’re willing to lend objects to corporations who’ll sponsor repairs. Many new companies build their images on heritage of some sort or another.”
“Can you see Seonaid’s portrait hanging in a bank in Tokyo?”
“Yes, Father, I can. Better there than on an auction block.” Diana continued, “There’s Pritchard’s idea of selling off one square foot plots of land. We could advertise in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Buy a bit of the Auld Sod, call yourself a laird or lady, that sort of thing. We’d essentially be selling deckle-edged, hand-lettered certificates of purchase, suitable for framing.”
Something creaked, probably a chair as Fergie sat down in it. He made a strangled sound that evolved into laughter. “Can you see an Aussie buying enough for a campsite? Or a Yank wanting to be buried standing up in his one square foot? Can you see a Canuck turning up with a shovel and digging up the sod to take home?”
“Have we a choice?” Diana asked, her words positively white-capped.
Jean could see one of her own countrymen wandering around with a GPS unit and little pegs to mark out his claim, dressed in a polyester kilt and “Braveheart” T-shirt.
Behind her, Alasdair whispered not, “You were right, we should have turned up fashionably late,” but, “You and your flapping ears.”
“Like your ears are folded over politely?” Jean whispered back. “This is a murder case, isn’t it?”
“It’s not—”
“—something you want happening to your friends. I know, I get the message.”
In a cascade of chimes, less-than-synchronized clocks struck all through the house. Six o’clock. They were no longer early. Jean barely had enough time to leap backward before the library door flew open and Diana shot out into the hall, the color in her compressed lips dull, the color in her cheeks high.
She didn’t seem to notice that Jean and Alasdair were just standing there, rather than walking toward her. Neither did she notice Alasdair’s suffused expression, which, Jean was sure, her own face replicated. “Good evening. Please go on in, Father’s expecting you. I’ll bring the drinks round soon as I’ve changed.”
“Thank you,” Jean said.
“Very kind of you,” said Alasdair, and with a roll of his eyes—okay, she deserved that—he bowed Jean into the room and made sure the door was shut behind them.
Flames crackled in the fireplace. The Christmas tree’s glitter was doubled in the window behind it. The doors between library and drawing room stood open, providing a vista appropriate to Country Life or a travelogue on the stately homes of Britain.
Just to complete the picture, Fergie, too, was wearing a kilt, a garment that flattered any type of male physique, from bean pole to walrus. A man in a kilt stood tall and walked with a certain strut.
Although when Fergie set an empty glass on the side table and rose to his feet, he didn’t strut but stood to attention. A stiff smile was plastered on his face, which was colored even more brightly than Diana’s. Jean wasn’t surprised to catch a whiff of whisky. Why taking a wee dram to brace yourself up was called Dutch courage, she didn’t know—it could just as well be called Scotch courage. She hoped Fergie had had only the one glass, that no more than his smile was plastered.
“Here we are, then,” he said.
“Aye,” returned Alasdair.
The shrill music of the violins swooped like songbirds trapped beneath a high ceiling. Fergie stepped over to the CD player nestled between skull-shaped bookends and put the piece out of its misery, producing a silence so deep his slight wheeze seemed loud.
Jean said, “I’m afraid our cat got into the hatbox you left for us and tore up the hackles on the bonnets. I’m so sorry, I know they were heirlooms.”
“Hackles? Oh, yes, the old bonnets. Not to worry, Jean, I’d not seen them for years. It was just that one of them belonged to my father’s friend Kenneth MacLeod, and Inspector Gilnockie’s saying it was his knife killed Greg. That Greg was likely his son. I wondered why that name sounded so familiar. It was you who took down the photo in the dining room, then?”
“Aye, that was us,” Alasdair answered. “The frame’s in the sideboard.”
“Good. I mean, good it was you. Rab was thinking Pritchard had made off with it, or Scott Krum. The frame’s an antique in its own right, a century older than the photo.”
“Was it Pritchard who looked up both Krum and Greg MacLeod on the Internet?”
“I expect so,” Fergie said. “Seems a bit ill-mannered, but then, Lionel’s looking out for Dunasheen’s well-being.”
“And for his own as well?” asked Alasdair.
Fergie’s gaze dropped to the stack of CDs. He chose one and inserted it in the player. “Lionel Pritchard’s not the most congenial of colleagues, I’ll grant you that. I’m not at all pleased with the way he looks at Diana. No surprise she mistrusts him. But he’s willing to work here, his accounts are accurate to the last decimal point, and nothing’s gone missing.”
“That you know of,” said Jean.
“Well, yes. I gather Pritchard’s your prime suspect for the murder?”
“Not anymore,” Alasdair said. “He’s been cleared.”
“I suppose I’m relieved to hear that.” Absently, Fergie patted one of the skull bookends. “I don’t rightly know how I feel, to tell truth. I’d rather have Pritchard turn out to be a villain than anyone else I can name. Even Colin Urquhart, for Diana’s sake.”
“I know how you feel. But it’s going to come down to motive, what Greg wanted and what someone else didn’t want him to have . . .” Jean looked over at Alasdair.
He was eyeing the cabinet holding the Fairy Flagon. “Was Greg after buying the Flagon? Or was he interested only in the Crusader Coffer?”
Fergie didn’t ask how Alasdair knew about the latter. He didn’t answer either question. He said, “Time to get the show on the road, you Yanks would say,” and punched the “play” button. The Chieftains begin to sing a jolly Christmas ditty, “The St. Stephen’s Day Murders.”
“I’m thinking it’s time to open the show, aye.” Alasdair drew his camera from his sporran.
Jean pulled out her notepad, found a fresh page, and smiled with that surge of glee she always felt when the gates to something strange and perhaps wonderful swung open before her.
Fergie tweaked the linen runner on a waiting table, then turned a key in the lock of the cabinet door and, with a flourish, threw it open.