With a sound between a snort and a sigh, Jean shut the door of the Lodge and locked it. Maybe she should title her next article “Locking Doors for Fun and Profit.”
The birds were singing, the sun was shining, a boat trailed a foaming white wake like the train of a bridal gown across the surface of the loch. You’d think there were no cares to be had in the world. You’d think there were no secret agendas, ones that impelled the bloody-minded not only to make threats but to also carry them out. Making long, purposeful strides across the courtyard, Jean imagined herself taller, stronger, a more formidable opponent . . . Dempsey had enemies, she told herself. All she had were irritants.
The front door of the main house opened and decanted the Bouchards, dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch’s latest hiking-up-Fifth-Avenue gear. “Good morning,” Charles said with a gracious inclination of his head. Sophie adjusted the zipper on her jacket and said, “Pretty sunshine day. Good to walk.”
“Yes, it’s a lovely morning.” Jean replied, not without a suspicious glance at the so-far innocent white clouds swanning overhead.
The Bouchards went on down the terrace. Jean lingered to pet the calico cat, who was sunning itself on the low wall where Elvis had stood last night to watch the show—both acts of it. This beastie wasn’t in the mood to be elusive, but emitted a comfortable and comforting purr.
All right! The slate flagstones rimming the terrace were carved with Pictish symbols, among them the gripping beast, Dempsey’s logo. The stylized shapes of bull, boar, eagle, and serpent reminded Jean of the drawings in the Book of Kells and other old Celtic Bibles. Which led her back around to beasts from Revelations or from the loch or both. Brushing away a scattering of broom petals like a drift of gold flakes, she crouched down for a better look.
A tattoo of footsteps announced Kirsty, walking around the base of the tower with her maiden—well, if Iris was not a maiden, at least permanently unmarried—aunt at her side. Iris was not only the taller of the two, her posture made a regimental sergeant major look slouched. Kirsty was sidling along with her head tilted up, speaking in a voice that made up in vehemence what it lacked in volume. Today her hair was pulled tightly back from her face, sharpening its curves into angles. Iris’s face was already angular. Her expression was the same as it had been on the television screen two nights ago, dealing sternly with the facts, thank you, not with anything as disreputable as fancy.
The two women stopped in the corner where the tower met the house, beside a small arched doorway. Kirsty’s voice rose. “Roger’s is just another expedition!”
“It wasn’t that even before he got his boat blown up last night. Good riddance, I’m thinking.”
“How can you go saying that? Jonathan Paisley has been missing since the explosion!”
Jean winced. So it was too late for angelic intervention. Poor Jonathan. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Not to speak ill of—of him.” Iris made a gesture that came close to patting Kirsty’s head. “But it just goes to show how Roger Dempsey will do anything, will sacrifice anyone, to further his ambitions. The other lad, the American, his back wants watching, I should think. If Roger had the least bit of respect, he would take his circus and go away home.”
“He’s not after going home, he’s making plans to get on with the ground survey.”
“How did . . . Ah. I see. That phone call. That was the American lad, was it?”
“His name is Brendan Gilstrap,” said Kirsty, her chin taking on that stubborn tilt Jean had seen all too often in her students. “And aye, I went walking down to hear the music with him last night. Dinna go tarring him with the brush you’re using on Roger.”
“Roger’s tarred himself. He needs no help from me. As for this Brendan, I promised your mum I’d look after you, considering what happened in Glasgow and all. Hanging about with Dempsey and his sort—no, I don’t think you’ll be doing that. I don’t think so at all.”
Silence, except for the wind in the shrubbery and Jean’s shoes making stealthy tracks away from the scene before the women realized they hadn’t been alone. There you go, she thought. The classic story of a young woman with an unsuitable boyfriend. Or unsuitable by Iris’s standards. Her own mother had been an American—surely that wasn’t the issue. Did Iris disapprove of monster-hunters in general or of Roger in particular, especially now that he had attracted violence?
And, parenthetically, what had happened with Kirsty in Glasgow that she had been more or less exiled here? Jean stopped at the far end of the terrace, straightened from her crouch, and spared a thought for youth, death, and solitude.
Then she focused on the vista before her. Plants and flowers of every color and description spilled up the hillside behind the house, bulged out across gravel paths, and strained against a fence. Drops of dew glinted like jewels tucked away in the foliage. Beyond a gate lay open pasture, grass short as a putting green, dotted with the gray of—oh, those lumps weren’t rocks, they were sheep. That explained the well-manicured lawn. Further up the hill the open fields were splotched with the dark green of heather and the pink-purple of foxgloves.
At the crest of the hill several Scots pines stood in solitary splendor, their limbs calligraphy against the mountainside beyond. The fence encircling them was fringed by what looked like large, lush Boston ferns but were actually bracken, fronds rippling in the wind. The Bouchards stood there scrutinizing a piece of paper.
“Good morning, Miss Fairbairn,” called Iris’s deep voice from behind Jean’s back.
She probably realized Jean had overheard her conversation with Kirsty, but courtesy consisted of mutual denial. Assuming a guileless smile, Jean turned around. “Good morning, Miss Mackintosh.”
Iris’s khaki and wool-clad form marched on past, over the edge of the terrace and onto the gravel garden path. “I hope the Lodge is all right for you.”
“I’m enjoying the space,” said Jean, scurrying to catch up. “I’m curious, though—why is one of the upper rooms locked?”
“Oh that. It’s too small for a bedroom so I use it as a lumber room for the occasional old family possession.”
Possession was the right word, thought Jean. But she’d only alienate her subject by pointing out that most B&B owners were happy to rent out rooms barely large enough for a bed. “Were you or Kirsty looking for a book in the Lodge yesterday afternoon? I found the shelves disarranged this morning.”
Iris stopped dead in the path. Jean skidded to a halt behind her. Her nose was so close to the much taller Iris’s knitted cardigan that she caught a whiff of bacon, revealing who had cooked the breakfast she’d skipped.
“I’ll have Kirsty set them to rights.” Iris’s t’s were honed to sharp points.
“No problem, I just wondered . . .”
Iris started off again, leaving Jean to sidle along the way Kirsty had, head cocked upward. Iris hadn’t answered the question, had she? Jean went on, “I’d like to ask you about . . .”
“My garden,” stated Iris. She stopped at the gate, made an about-face, and launched into a botanical litany. Jean barely had time to whip out her notebook.
Meadow sweet. Thyme. Flag iris, origin of the fleur de lis of France and its Auld Alliance with Scotland. St. John’s wort, almost a weed in Jean’s garden in Texas. Soapwort, woundwort, ragwort—known as Stinking Willy after the infamous William, Duke of Cumberland, the victor at Culloden. Prickly purple thistles, the symbol of Scotland. Wild roses, woodruff, silverweed, vetch, eyebright. More broom. The Bonny, Bonny Broom was one of Hugh’s folk songs.
Iris’s face softened with both affection and pride, as though she talked about grandchildren. She pointed out the boxwood hedges, box being the clan badge of the Mackintoshes, and indicated the elder trees rising at the back of the house and the rowans at the front, that particular arrangement guarding against witches. Jean wanted to comment that it had apparently not guarded against Crowley, but thought better of it—Iris had already segued into plant dyes, wool, spinning and knitting.
A knitter herself, Jean asked, “Do you use the wool from your own sheep?”
Iris gazed out at the fuzzy gray blobs that dotted the field. “Yes, I do. And I conduct classes. Cottage industries, mind you, make more ecological sense than these giant factories. Do you fancy a look at the Pitclachie Stone?”
“Yes, please.” Jean’s head was spinning. She thrust her notebook into her bag and followed.
Iris headed through the gate and up a muddy path, her boots splashing through the puddles. With her not-so-sturdy but thankfully flat shoes, Jean played hopscotch with the dryer patches. She waited next to the corrugated prints of the Bouchards’ hiking boots while Iris unlatched the gate in the deer fence and pushed it open. An inquisitive branch of the bracken brushed against Jean’s ankle, sending a creeping sensation up her leg.
Stepping into the pine glade was like stepping into a remote, mysterious place out of another century, or even another world. Even the song of the birds seemed muted. No one else was there—the French couple had either not gone into the enclosure at all or had walked through it and out the gate on the far side.
The trees murmured in the wind and their shadows rippled over the shape that stood beneath them, as though shadow itself could erode like water. But the slab of stone had been deliberately broken, not eroded. It rose from a pile of smooth silver rocks stained by whorls of gold and gray lichen, lonely and yet dignified. Jean stepped toward it reverently.
The Stone was taller than she’d thought from its photo, as high as her chest. There was no way of knowing how high it had stood when complete, but the stump was solid enough to have supported several more feet of stone. She traced the carved horse’s head with her forefinger, set her fingertips into the shallower line beneath, then laid her hand flat on the unmarked surface to the side. The rock harbored a chill that was deeper than mere cold, sending a frisson up her arm, and felt like fine-grained sandpaper against her skin. The small hole looked like a mouth shaped in an O of sorrow.
Without quite realizing what she was doing, Jean stooped and peered through the hole, just as she’d peeped through the keyhole of the locked door. She saw merely the green and gold rush of light and shadow, no glimpses of ancient times or other dimensions. Her sixth sense remained dormant. Whatever flicker of ghostly energy she’d felt last night didn’t seem to have emanated from here. She was almost disappointed.
Straightening, she brushed her fingertips across the broken edge, gingerly, but it wasn’t sharp enough to cut. Only then did she remember Iris was standing behind her. “How did the Stone get broken?” she asked in a voice that was almost a whisper.
“I don’t know. This piece of it was lying here amidst the bracken when I was a child. When I returned to Pitclachie in the seventies, after my father’s death, I had it erected. Seemed the least I could do to honor the ancient people who once lived here.” Iris’s drill-sergeant voice softened, as though she, too, sensed the weight of time in this place. “Nomenclature can be a bit dodgy as evidence, I know, but the word ‘Pit-clachie’ does suggest that the Stone was a local landmark many centuries ago. As a boundary marker of the old kingdom of Fidach, perhaps.”
“Do you know where the rest of the Stone is?”
“Vandalized and destroyed long since, I daresay.”
“Your father found this part being used as the doorstep of the same cottage that’s now the Lodge? Why didn’t he set it up himself?”
When Iris didn’t answer, Jean looked around. The woman stood with her hands on her hips, gazing between the tree trunks down the hillside past the island of house and garden—of modernity—toward the distant glint of water. Was that a certain queasiness in her expression? No. Her face was stern and cold, enigmatic as that of the Stone.
“My father was the local representative of the Office of Works during the nineteen-twenties,” she finally replied. “He helped excavate Urquhart Castle. He was quite the scholar when it came to the archaeology and folklore of the area.”
Instead of saying, I know, Jean waited.
“He wrote that he found the Stone when he shifted and repaired a seventeenth-century cottage, yes. He believed these small stones . . .” Iris nudged one with her foot. “. . . are all that remains of an ancient cairn, which is why he left it here, I suppose. The Pictish cemetery of Garbeg is further up the hill. This might be related to it.”
“I know he wrote about Garbeg,” Jean said, without adding, At least he only excavated one grave and left the rest to archaeological posterity. “I didn’t know he wrote about finding the Stone. Where? Not in Pictish Antiquities.”
“No, not at all. In some of his personal papers.” Iris’s emphasis on the word “personal” was unmistakable.
That Ambrose had personal papers was news to Jean, although she was hardly going to faint in amazement. “Have you ever thought of publishing some of his papers? His field notes would interest historians and archaeologists. The Museum of Scotland would love to know where he found that silver hoard, whether here at Pitclachie or at Urquhart or on the south side of the Loch. I’m sure my partner at Great Scot would make you an offer.”
Iris took a hasty step away, no doubt realizing she’d said too much. “Very kind of her, but no.”
“Perhaps I could just read a few of the papers while I’m here, then, and take notes.”
“No,” said Iris again, biting off the word, and then, with a half-smile that could be interpreted as apology, “He was a much-maligned figure in these parts, Miss Fairbairn. Most unfairly. He had his eccentricities, yes, but was at heart a good man with no vices—he neither smoked nor drank to excess, for example. Feel free to look over the library in the house. Much of his collection of books and antiquities is there.”
But not those intriguing personal papers. Was that what Iris meant by “the occasional old family possession” stored in the locked room in the cottage? The room that smelled of pipe tobacco—well, he could have given up smoking when his daughter was born.
Feeling an itch in her palms, Jean murmured, “Thank you, I’ll do that.” She told herself to get a grip. By “papers,” Iris could mean anything from laundry lists to bank statements. A diary reading, “February 4, 1933. Today my daughter Iris was born” was possible. One reading “March 29, 1933. Today I killed my wife by pushing her down the stairs” or “May 2, 1933. Today I invented the Loch Ness monster” was much less likely.
Whatever, Iris did not want those papers read, let alone published. Ambrose might be a historical figure of sorts, but not far enough in the past for family feelings to have dried up and blown away. In a country that ran to ghosties and ghoulies dating back millennia, seventy years or so was a mere blink of the eye. Jean had known all along she’d be reluctant to grill Iris about her father’s—personal, private, secret—matters. What she’d suspected all along was that once she reached the scene, curiosity would win out over reluctance.
Iris walked to the gate and opened it, her extended hand directing Jean down the path toward the house. Obligingly, Jean moved out, but not without one last breath of the tang of pine and one last look at the Stone. How Roger intended to prove his theory that the symbols carved on it represented an early Nessie even her imagination couldn’t fathom.
From the house came the gleeful shriek of a child, answered by a shouted maternal directive. Car doors slammed. “I’m sure the B&B is very popular, right here on the main tourist route,” said Jean.
“That it is,” Iris replied, her steps steady on Jean’s heels. “Tourists can be a bane as well as a blessing, mind. We’re caught in a vicious circle. The visitors come, therefore need facilities, and the facilities then change for the worse the very thing the visitors have come to see. To say nothing of attracting even more visitors.”
Alasdair Cameron had muttered about selling your own heritage. If not for tourists, though, Scotland would be in serious financial trouble. Jean asked, “Like the new Historic Scotland visitor center at the Castle?”
“Hysterical Scotland.” Iris didn’t smile when she said that, so Jean suppressed her own. “Not wishing to be burdened by the facts, it ignored my environmental impact statements and destroyed the site in order to ‘improve’ it. The traffic has gone from bad to worse. Human beings can’t leave well alone, can they?”
No, Jean thought, leaving well enough alone was harder for your average human being than losing that last five pounds. And she didn’t exclude herself from either. “I guess you’re not too happy with this Monster Madness stuff, then.”
“This area has a great deal to offer the visitor without going on and on about chimerical creatures in the loch. Why, some pseudo-scientist or another has actually introduced American flatworms to the eco-system, brought in on their equipment. Shocking!”
“Surely the flatworms were introduced by accident.”
Muttering something about common sense preventing accidents, Iris opened the garden gate, ushered Jean through, then shut it with a resounding clang.
“Maybe the explosion last night wasn’t an accident,” suggested Jean. “I hear Roger Dempsey received some threatening letters. Do you have any idea who could have sent them?”
“Someone who wanted to stop his expedition, I expect. Considering Roger’s reputation, it could have been almost anyone. Although blowing up his boat does seem a bit—drastic.” Iris walked on toward the house, trailing her hand through the leaves and flowers crowding the path, leaving Jean to play catch-up yet again.
“I hear one of his assistants is missing,” she said to Iris’s back.
“A shame, that. But then, Roger has never hesitated to put others at risk in order to serve his own ambitions. I have nothing against educated amateurs, mind—I’m one myself—but the ones who don’t realize their limitations can do far more harm than good.”
“He told me he’s going to search here at Pitclachie. I guess he means some sort of geophysical survey, not actually digging, not unless he finds something.”
Iris made a sound that Jean interpreted as a thin, taut laugh, the sort of laugh that teetered uneasily between humor and a harsher emotion, although she couldn’t tell what that emotion was. Annoyance? Embarrassment? Perhaps even grief? Jean was beginning to suspect that something more than academic disagreement had soured Iris’s feelings toward Roger.
Iris stepped up onto the terrace and spun around. Her pale gray eyes didn’t look at Jean so much as through her. “Please go back out to the Stone any time you wish. Just make sure the gate shuts properly, so that the sheep don’t get into the garden.”
“Thank you.” It was time to slip gracefully out of the interview before she was forcibly ejected. “Can we talk again soon, perhaps this evening? I’d like to hear about your work with Scotland the Green. And your father’s archaeological work as well—I’m hoping to do something about the spirit of scientific inquiry running in the family.”
Iris nodded at that. “Well then, yes, there are important matters that should be brought to the attention of the public, such as ATV damage in mountain passes. And some of my earlier work might be of interest—deforestation in Brazil, water conservation in India and the like. ”
“Great!” Jean heard another set of car doors slam. That must have been the Ducketts taking off for the day, unless Kirsty was running some errands.
No, here came Kirsty around the corner of the house, her arms waving. “Aunt Iris!”
Without another word to Jean, Iris strode away across the flagstones, bent her head close to Kirsty’s urgent murmur, and then vanished around the corner. Kirsty skipped briskly after her.
Wondering what that was all about, Jean pulled out her notebook and jotted down first what Iris had said, and second what she had implied.
No one would admit faster than Jean that there was a fine line, a very tense line, like quivering piano wire, between privacy and secrecy. She reminded herself that she was not an investigative reporter but a mild-mannered journalist after mild-mannered stories for a history and travel magazine. Still, she could try to make friends with Iris, hoping she’d talk about Ambrose and the Stone and, if she was lucky, Eileen’s disappearance.
Which was what Roger was doing with Jean. If there was a line between secrecy and privacy, there was also one between being friendly and exploiting that friendship. Iris’s chill cordiality seemed like a refreshing breeze after Roger’s—well, he hadn’t quite sunk to the level of smarm. Jean would rather go without a story than smarm Iris or anyone else.
So far, though, she hadn’t learned much about Ambrose she didn’t already know. He’d been a teenager when he fell under Crowley’s spell, metaphorically speaking, just before Crowley left Scotland around 1900. Soon afterwards, Ambrose went up to Oxford and read history and archaeology, then shared his time between family in Britain and Crowley on the Continent. In 1914, unlike the blatantly anti-war Crowley, he went off to do his duty on the western front.
After the war, Ambrose helped excavate Urquhart Castle, wrote florid prose about area antiquities and legends for various newspapers and magazines, married, and remodeled the family estate. While rarely or never seeing Crowley, Ambrose remained an admirer. By the 1930s, the old wizard had devolved from evildoer to laughing-stock. Ambrose probably wrote the justificative biography for just that reason—if your guru’s a joke, then so are you. Jean understood. One of the reasons she’d followed through with the lawsuit against the university was to protect her students’ reputations as well as her own.
She tucked away her notebook, thinking that she could sure empathize—boy, could she empathize—with a policeman growing frustrated at not getting the whole story. Except that a policeman was usually justified in demanding the whole story and nothing but, and Jean wasn’t.
An all-too-familiar male voice echoed harshly in the courtyard, a loud sarcastic voice that demanded rather than asked. Jean’s hackles bristled. Shit! The minute she saw D.C. Gunn on television, she should have known that the Northern Constabulary’s token troll, Detective Sergeant Andy Sawyer, was skulking around the area, too.
It might have been amusing to hang around and see how long it took Iris to turn him into stone, except Jean had never found anything amusing in D.S. Sawyer. In a thoroughly undignified scuttle, she whisked around the far side of the cottage and gained her car without being accosted. But not without telling herself that if Sawyer and Gunn were on the scene, D.C.I. Cameron couldn’t be far behind.