Chapter Twelve

 

 

No sooner did Jean feel the burden of the supernatural settle on her shoulders, along with the weight of Alasdair’s arm as he, too, sensed as much as heard the voices, than the sensation ebbed. For once she hated to see it go. The music was the aural equivalent of the star she’d seen at sunset, a reminder of eternal peace and beauty.

With a sigh, she finished her whisky. Its warmth glistened like quicksilver in her living veins.

“I’m thinking any of Grinsell’s folk still watching the priory were not hearing a thing.” Alasdair’s voice caught in his throat, brushed against the grain.

“I’m wondering whether Elaine really was speaking with a ghost.”

He nodded toward the coffee table, where his reading glasses sat next to a booklet. “I found that on the shelf next some books on Farnaby and Lindisfarne and Elaine’s The Matter of Britannia. Why Britannia, by the by? I was thinking the Arthurian stories the Matter of Britain.”

“Elaine focused on Guinevere, though. Britannia, the Roman goddess, the female symbol of Britain. The distaff side.”

“So to speak. Britannia’s always pictured with weapons and armor. A proper Amazon.”

“That was Elaine’s point, Guinevere as a strong figure in her own right, a ruler, a priestess, maybe even a warrior. That’s not the most novel of concepts—think what Hollywood’s done with it—but Elaine’s twist is that Guinevere is Gwendeth, Merlin’s sister. She intended writing a second book about how Farnaby’s chantry chapel is the center of her cult.”

“Her evidence being the testimony of a ghost?”

“We don’t know that, not for sure.” Jean set down her glass and picked up the small book. The shiny cover sported the title, Hilda, the Enchanted Prioress of Farnaby, and a rough medieval woodcut of a nun. Her tiny oval face was no more than a sketch of humanity encompassed by wimple and veil. “The magical prioress?”

“You were saying the legends were likely no more than the usual stories of saints and miracles, but this lady was no saint, for all she was a contemporary of Saint Aidan.”

“She comes from the era of Saint Hilda of Whitby, too, then, but it sounds as though they have only the name in common.”

“I’ve not finished reading the story. I’m thinking she’ll come to a bad end, accused of witchcraft.”

“The early Celtic church wasn’t nearly as dogmatic about that, and local foundations had a lot more leeway than when the Roman church took over, so maybe not.”

On the windowsill, the cat jerked upright, making the curtains billow. Racing steps and urgent voices sounded from outside.

“. . . in here,” said a male voice, and something thumped.

“Thanks,” a woman said breathlessly. “What Mags said—I swear, if that’s how your cops treat people . . .”

“Hush.”

In a coordinated move worthy of Rogers and Astaire, Jean and Alasdair leaped from the sofa to the window and bumped heads over the cat’s alert ears.

Alasdair radiated warmth onto Jean’s temple. The glass radiated chill onto her forehead. In the mist-matted darkness beyond the window, nothing moved. She closed her eyes, opened them, and then made out the gravel path between Pen’s tidy flower beds, a bench, a bird feeder. A clothesline dripped moisture, each droplet a quick gleam. Beyond the garden wall the priory seemed no more than arched implication.

“I don’t . . .” she said, her breath misting the glass, just as Alasdair’s hand clamped down on her arm. “There.”

Using Hildy’s ears as a sighting device, Jean spotted a slender female shape crouching against the wall between the garden and Cuddy’s Close, almost concealed by a shrub whose bare branches stitched shadow across the pastel fabric of her jacket. A white bandage glinted on her hand. Tara.

Footsteps moved in stately rhythm down the alley. A burst of light illuminated the broad shoulders and blond hair of Lance Eccleston, his back turned, facing the far end of the wall. Answering—no, from the vantage point of the window Jean could see he only pretended to answer a call of nature.

“Here!” P.C. Crawford’s reflective jacket seemed bright as a solar flare.

“Hmm?” Lance’s hands moved, but he wasn’t actually zipping up. He turned around, his step less steady than it would be strolling across the deck of the ferry in a heavy swell. His words came lazily, a bit slurred. “Oh, it’s you, Constable. You’re missing a grand session at the pub.”

“The pub has loos,” Crawford said coldly.

“The gent’s was engaged. And I was wanting a breath of air.” He clapped Crawford on the shoulder and leaned into his face. From the way Crawford recoiled, Jean deduced that breath was indeed the issue. “I thought you’d be well away home by now. Your shift ended hours ago.”

Fending Lance off, Crawford asked, “Have you seen Tara Hogg?”

“Not since eight or thereabouts, round about the time everyone went haring off after the polis. Have you asked at Gow House?”

“Aye, that I have. Maggie’s saying Tara’s at the music school, but she’s not.” The beam of the flashlight swooped high and low, over the garden wall and across the back of the house. Behind the shrub, Tara wrapped her arms tightly around her chest and shrank into a ball.

A light flooded the garden and a door slammed open. “Edwin? Lance?” Pen called from the back of the house. “What’s all this?”

“Sorry to be bothering you, Pen.” Crawford all but knuckled his forehead. “I’m looking out Miss Hogg. D. I. Grinsell wants a word.”

Another reflective jacket drifted into the alley behind Crawford, the face above it concealed in shadow. It was either Sergeant Darling, Jean thought, or an official wild card.

Crawford tried again. “Pen, have you seen Tara Hogg?”

Pen had to see Tara crouching in her flower bed. Jean could see the young woman’s face as clearly as she could see Alasdair’s, drawn and pale against the window.

“Why no,” Pen said. “I’ve not seen the lass for quite some time. It’s getting on for half past ten . . . Oh. Hello. I’m Penelope Fleming.”

“Detective Sergeant Rufus Darling,” he called over the wall. “Sorry for the disturbance, madam.” Turning to Crawford, he asked, “No joy with Elaine Lauder either, I assume?

“Niamh’s already put her to bed. Poor old thing’s not fit for an interview in any event.”

“Well then.” Darling made a wagons-ho gesture. “Inspector Grinsell’s agreed there’s no call chasing wild geese in the darkness. We’ll have another go tomorrow. The boat’s staying the night—weather’s too thick to be out in the shipping lanes unless needs must, but our passenger’s in no rush.”

“Aye, sir.” Crawford fell into step beside Darling and the sound of their shoes on the damp pavement was absorbed into the voices and music from the pub. The light in the garden winked out and the back door shut with a solid thunk.

By the time Jean’s eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, the garden gate had creaked open and clicked shut and both Tara and Lance were gone. To Gow House? There was no better place to hide than one that had already been searched. “What did poor Darling have to do to get Grinsell to give it up for the night? Sacrifice a virgin?”

“I’m hoping he appealed to logic and procedure. No matter. If Grinsell finds Lance was hiding Tara, as was Pen, come to that, he’ll be having their guts for garters.”

“He’d take a chunk or two out of us for not blowing the whistle.”

“Aye, but no one knows we were watching save the cat here.”

“True.” Jean backed away from the window and realized she still held Hilda, the Enchanted Prioress of Farnaby, her fingertips moist against the slick paper. “So was Tara in the pub after all, and didn’t hear Maggie’s text come in? And then Crawford came looking for her? If so, Lance did some fast thinking. And fast side-choosing. So did Pen.”

“Trust Grinsell to set everyone in the village against him. That said,” Alasdair went on, “the body’s almost sure to be older than Maggie, never mind Tara. She’s got nothing to fear from an interview.”

The show over, Hildy jumped down and wended her way toward the door.

“You didn’t hear how Grinsell treated Maggie,” Jean retorted. “You didn’t hear what he said about Tara without ever having met her.”

“She’s making the eventual confrontation even worse, for no good reason.”

Jean reminded herself again that Alasdair was a cop. A male cop. “We’re only guessing about her reason. What if . . . Whoa! What if Tara took the chanter out of the grave? I saw someone walking toward the priory right before we went to eat, remember? Maybe she’s trying to protect her mother and grandmother.”

“Ah.” The furrow between Alasdair’s eyebrows deepened. “If so, she’s making it worse for them as well.”

“She is, yes—the missing chanter gave Grinsell another opening to harass Maggie. If only the mist hadn’t stranded him . . . Oh, no—where’s he staying? Not here, not in Michael and Rebecca’s room. Pen will have to fumigate it before Michael and Rebecca can put the baby in there tomorrow.”

“Surely this is not the only B and B. There’s the hostel as well.”

From several rooms away came Pen’s voice. “Puss, puss—there you are.”

Hildy meowed.

“A bit of cream? I’ll warm it for you, shall I?” A door shut.

She who must be obeyed, Jean thought. Surprising herself with a smile, she walked over to the sofa and retrieved her mini-backpack. “Poor Tara. The way she feels about Lance, and then having to take any port in a storm.”

Alasdair switched off the electric fire. “Eh?”

“The romantic triangle. I told you earlier.”

“When?”

“In the pub, right after Tara broke the glass and Niamh checked her hand.”

“Oh aye, James came running with bandages. Seems unlikely, though, with James being so much older and married to boot.”

Jean laughed. “Not James. Lance has a crush on Tara, but she doesn’t reciprocate. Didn’t you hear what they were saying to each other right before we got in the car to drive up to the priory? He called her a proper little bitch and she told him to stuff it where the sun don’t shine.”

“Ah,” Alasdair said. “Hardly a love triangle, then.”

“Okay then, it’s a frustration polygon. The third angle is Niamh. The way she looks at Lance, I bet she has a crush on him. I bet she called Lance while we were on the ferry, wanting to meet him in the pub. He wasn’t thrilled but couldn’t avoid it.”

Alasdair hadn’t blinked.

“Missed the whole thing, didn’t you? And you call yourself a detective.”

“A detective, not a lonely-hearts columnist. A right weary detective at that, thinking he’d best have himself a good night’s sleep before it all starts up again.” Alasdair bowed Jean toward the door. “And before you go wasting your breath reminding me, aye, we’re never knowing what’s evidence and what’s not, so your romantic triangle’s worth observing.”

“It’s not my triangle,” was all Jean replied, without adding that the elusive nature of evidence was Grinsell’s justification as well, never mind his nasty remarks about chin-wagging women.

Jean led the way upstairs and plunged into the evening routine, washing the taste of Grinsell out of her mouth with a fierce squeeze of mint toothpaste. By the time she lay down in the bed beside Alasdair he was already asleep, his furrowed brow almost smooth again. She blew him a kiss and picked up the booklet.

The real Hilda of Farnaby had not been clothed in the intricate medieval habit of the cover illustration. She had probably worn a simple wool shift and veil, her wonders to perform. Almost unhinging her jaw with a yawn, Jean flipped quickly through the book, pausing at a sketch of Hilda levitating over the sea to Lindisfarne to visit her opposite number at that priory. Quite the mystic, she had protected her followers from various physical and spiritual dangers and died peacefully in bed surrounded by admirers.

Surely it had occurred to Maggie that the original tomb, later superseded by a Norman chantry, could have been Hilda’s. But if Maggie was trying to justify her mother’s work . . . Jean promised herself to have another look at the grave slab tomorrow. Who had said something about horsemen? Tara?

Had she taken the chanter? Realistically, anyone on the island could have taken it—assuming the bush telegraph operated as efficiently here as it did in other small communities and word of the body and the chanter had made the rounds before Grinsell’s arrival.

You’d have to have a strong motive to poke around in that grave, in the dark, alone. Jean put that image out of her head and considered the booklet’s title page: By Elaine Lauder. The same name was handwritten below, in a firm, classical script, with the words, For Pen and James, who know where the bodies are buried.

Literally? Surely not. Elaine would hardly have autographed the book with those words if so. She only meant that Pen and James were good friends dating back many years.

Poor Elaine. A living ghost haunting Farnaby.

Jean set the book on the bedside table, switched off the light, and settled down against the crisp, fresh pillows. Yawn or no yawn, she knew it would be one of those nights when she was too tired to stay awake but too wired to sleep.

The grave did not belong to Arthur. Even though Arthur’s followers had sent him off in a boat. With three queens. Who had welcomed the mortally wounded man to the mystical island of Avalon.

A mystical island. Three queens. Elaine. Maggie. Tara.

Where did Niamh come in?

Jean hadn’t realized she’d dozed off until she woke up with a start.