CHAPTER 44

  

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Rupert said into the rear view mirror.

“Where are we heading?” Lane asked. His knees were almost even with his chin in the cramped back seat. Now that we were out of immediate danger he kicked over a bundle on the seat next to him and stretched out his legs.

“Hey, watch it with your mucky feet,” Rupert said, looking into the rearview mirror.

“It’s only a little mud.”

“I’ve been staying at a flat in Edinburgh,” Rupert said. “It’s a couple hours’ drive, but it’ll give us a place to sort things out.”

“Keep talking while you drive,” I said.

“Where was I?” Rupert said.

“Three weeks ago.”

“Nothing had come of Knox thinking there might be something to Sir Edward’s ruby necklace—until this summer. Fiona rang up Knox from this dig she’d arrived at. She mentioned that during their initial survey, they found a ruby in the earth. They assumed it had fallen off a piece of jewelry from some wealthy hiker, so they turned it in to the local police station. Since the Gregor Estate was next to the dig site, and since the stone was a ruby, that got Knox thinking. The dig was understaffed, so Malcolm was happy to have extra help. Knox was able to search around at night, and he found that ruby bracelet I sent you. It was shallowly buried in a sandy area along the cliff.

“Knox rang me up, since now that we had a location, we had more to go on. Since the Rajasthan Rubies hadn’t been seen in ages, except for the necklace that Sir Edward Gregor had, we thought the treasure must still be hidden. We guessed that Connor Gregor got lucky and succeeded in getting the treasure out of India, and he brought it back to Britain. He’d been in India under the Raj, and Sir Edward Gregor was his descendant. It all fit. We thought Connor must have left a clue somewhere. But as much as we searched, both at the Gregor Estate and around the site where we found the bracelet, we didn’t find anything else. That’s when I thought you could help. We never stopped to think it might have been someone else in the family. I was right that I needed you.”

Rupert paused as he passed a truck on the road.

“We were exhausted from digging at night and exploring and helping on the dig during the day,” he said. “At the time, I thought it was sleep deprivation making me paranoid, but something seemed strange on the dig. A mood. Something was off. I was sure someone had found out what we were doing. I hid the bracelet in my room, and when I went to check on it one night, I could tell someone else had moved it. That’s when I decided to send it to you. It seemed like your specialty. Plus you were always so clever. You told me how easily you’d figured out the clues left in that company man’s diary. I knew you’d be able to find something we missed.”

He glanced over at me fondly before turning his eyes back to the road.

“And I was right,” Rupert said, smiling as he drove. “How did you put it together with the girl?”

I explained briefly about Rupert having the historical timing wrong, that it was Willoughby and Elspeth who left India during the Sepoy Rebellion, and how I put it together when Fergus and Angus thought I looked like the bean nighe fairy of the local woman who died in childbirth.

“The girl in that painting looks nothing like you,” Rupert said once I was done with my explanation. “Half the girls in London look more like her. You’re much more striking. Hmm. I wonder if he loved her because she was his daughter or because she got the jewels out of India for him. She made him a very rich man.”

“That’s horrible,” I said.

“What? Like you didn’t wonder?”

“No,” I said. “He took her with him at a time when it was clear being the child of an interracial marriage in India wasn’t going to be easy. You only needed to look at that loving sketch he made to know I’m right.”

We drove along for a few minutes before I persuaded Rupert to continue with his narrative.

“How did you end up with the bracelet?” I asked. “Why didn’t Knox have it?”

He gave a raspy laugh that I didn’t like the sound of.

“Knox was nervous,” Rupert said. “Felt like someone was watching him. He never saw anyone, but you should have seen how jittery he was. But you know where my skepticism got me. I thought he was paranoid before he gave it to me, but once I had it, I thought I might go mad myself. I needed to get it away from the dig.

“Right after I drove to a village to mail you the package, I had the accident. I knew for certain that it hadn’t been my imagination after that. Someone was serious enough about having the treasure that he was willing to kill for it. I had the upper hand with him thinking I was dead, so I took advantage of that and thought I could quickly find the rest of the treasure while no one was watching me. I needed a few days to rest up, as I told you. I hadn’t had any luck at the Gregor Estate yet, so I thought I’d at least try my luck at the British Library. You always seemed to find such helpful information there, like the diary that gave me the idea about the treasure being from a Company man in the first place.” He glanced at me fondly again. “But library research is always so dull, and I didn’t find anything.

“I nearly had a heart attack when I saw you at the library,” he continued. “I’d left you messages telling you not to worry about getting in touch. I didn’t want you getting involved in the mess that nearly got me killed.”

He explained how he came back to look for more clues at the Gregor Estate. He thought he had figured out where the treasure was buried. He wanted to get everyone out of the way for what he assumed would be his last night of digging, but he again came up empty-handed.

“I knew I’d lost my one big chance at doing such blatant digging without arousing suspicion,” he concluded, “but I was so sure I’d find it. I didn’t see Knox before I left. Someone else is after the treasure.”

I stared out the window, watching the landscape around us rush by in a blur.

“Maybe we got the motive wrong,” I said.

“What?” he asked distractedly, passing a slow-moving car on the highway.

“What if it wasn’t about the treasure,” I said, thinking out loud. “You admitted to completely destroying the cave right underneath the dig. Malcolm Alpin wouldn’t let anything compromise his dig.”

Rupert looked at me incredulously.

“Malcolm?” he said. “It’s not possible.”

“I know he seems like a perfectly likable man most of the time, but I’ve seen him when he has one of his fits of anger about his dig—”

“He thinks the knowledge to be gained from the dig is enormous,” Lane said from the backseat. “His scholarly expedition is too precious to let anyone ruin it with a fanciful treasure.”

“And his fanatical devotion to proving his ideas in place of mainstream accepted theories,” I said.

“Don’t you two ever stop finishing each other’s sentences and shut up?” Rupert said. “That’s not it. You two can collaborate about theoretically brilliant motives all you like, but Malcolm couldn’t have killed Knox. I sent him on a wild goose chase last night as well. I was worried about his habit of checking up on his beloved dig. After your friend here was arrested, I called up the inn and left a message for Malcolm that there was some paperwork back at his university he needed to sign first thing in the morning to assure his grant for this dig was processed properly. He needed to head back to St. Andrews that night to assure being prompt for the morning meeting.”

My hands gripped the dashboard as I took in what he was saying.

“You see,” Rupert said, “there’s no way Malcolm could have done it. Thanks to me, he has an alibi.”