Chapter Twenty-five

 

 

Clyde sat at the door of the classroom-cum-café collecting pound coins and making change, while Pen, a smile settled comfortably on her face once again, supervised the food-and-tea table. A searching look around informed Jean that while Crawford might still be in the building, he sure wasn’t in the room.

Clutching cups and bits of pastry either savory or sweet, she, Alasdair, and Darling put their heads together in one corner. Jean swore Darling stood at least two inches taller now that he no longer hunkered down like a dog expecting a blow. “I’ve texted our forensic accountant,” he said. “I found her at home on a Saturday night—but then, she’s an older lady.”

Probably my age, Jean thought.

“She’ll look into the Lauders’ financial records and get back to us.”

“Well done,” Alasdair told him, and set out the latest in full outline form, starting with “McCarthy, Niamh, person of interest” and ending with, “Constable, local, possible complications of.”

The younger man’s eyes occasionally moved from Alasdair’s face to Jean’s, as though pleading, Please tell me he’s joking. All Jean could do was smile wanly and unbutton her cardigan in the warmth.

At last Darling stuffed the last portion of a scone into his mouth, washed it down with a swig from his cup, and said thickly, “I’ll bring Niamh in to the interview room, shall I? And P.C. Crawford wants questioning as well. Not at the same time.”

She was no longer “Miss McCarthy,” Jean noted. Another look around ascertained Niamh wasn’t in the room, either, even though the three generations of Lauder women were. The king was gone, but the queens lived on.

Alasdair told Darling, “Carry on.”

“Yes, sir.” Collecting his reflective jacket from the coat corner, Darling went off with his phone raised in front of his face, no doubt trying to get hold of Crawford. Who could have walked right by without Darling seeing him, Jean thought with a smile. Nothing said oblivious like someone consulting his auxiliary brain.

“Oh, and . . .” Alasdair followed Darling from the room.

In the doorway they brushed by the two reporters, who were having a serious discussion with Clyde. “. . . gluten-free bakery products?” vinyl-jacket was asking, in a helium-fueled screech that made Tara’s voice seem soft and sweet.

“Gluten? What’s that when it’s at home?” Clyde returned.

Bad-haircut peered around the room and announced, “There’s no proper drinks here.” He and his compadre retreated into the hall.

Jean followed. “Hello again. I guess you had your fill of Farnaby scones on Friday?”

Bad-haircut stared.

“We were chatting at the ferry slip late yesterday afternoon,” Jean reminded him. “You told me about Dr. Lauder’s change in plans and her lecture in the church with tea and scones.”

“Oh! Yes, yes, the ferry slip on the mainland.” His sagging jowls tightened in an attempt at a smile. He started to extend his hand, then withdrew it and used it to scratch his arm instead. “Bill Parkinson, Daily Dish. Had to fight a moggie for my bacon sandwich outside the pub. Nothing causes an allergy like a cat.”

Ah, this was Lance’s reporter fellow at the pub, back for another round on Farnaby. He worked for the tabloid whose website had already tried and condemned Maggie. “Jean Fairbairn, Great Scot,” she said, hoping her smile concealed the fact that she was just as happy not shaking hands. What if poor Hildy had broken out in hives at coming into contact with him?

Vinyl-jacket noted the man’s affiliation and back-story with a supercilious smirk. “This is your second journey here in two days, is it? Oh, bad luck.” She leaned conspiratorially toward Jean, engulfing her with a rich perfume that hinted more of sewer gas than flowers. “Rosalie Banks. News of the North. Fog makes for strange bedfellows, I’m afraid. I had no intention of staying here this long. I’ve booked a chap with a boat, effective the moment this filthy weather clears. That blond lad with the silly little drum, wasted out here, could have himself a job at a club in the city—or working extortion rackets, considering what he’s charging for the boat.”

Parkinson’s gaze was that of a dead fish. Jean felt her polite smile grow stiff.

“Soon as I get back to Manchester I’m having a word in the guv’nor’s ear—I told him it was no good chasing after a moldy old body—when we saw the helicopter from the ferry I hoped there was something more doing on Farnaby than . . .” Rosalie’s downward gesture both took in the scene and dismissed it.

“Lucky for you D.I. Grinsell was attacked, then,” Jean murmured, trying not to visualize his stark, pale face smeared with blood. “Makes your trip worthwhile.”

“That’s as may be,” said Rosalie. “I’m away to the pub—the others are already there—if I’d gone along I’d be on my second whisky by now, but no, I thought something for the Arts page. Dead loss, though. I hope you were happy with Turnip-ville amateur night, Bill.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and clicked off down the hall in her high-heeled boots, Barbie playing Nazi.

Jean coughed, swapping the odor of the perfume for that of baked goods, damp wool sweaters, and a whiff of sour sweat she suspected came from Parkinson.

“I met up with her on the ferry,” he explained. “I advised attending the concert. Farnaby’s famous for its music, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The Lauders have lived here a long time. Do you know Elaine? Or maybe I should ask, did you know her when she was Elaine?”

Through the doorway, Parkinson considered the still tall if emaciated figure cruising down the table of edibles. Maggie stopped her as she tried to insert one of Pen’s pies into the pocket of her sweater. Hugh stepped up, tucked Elaine’s arm beneath his own, and, exuding affability, launched into what was no doubt a story about Ye Olden Days. “Alan a Dale!” Elaine exclaimed, remembering his nickname, and stood watching him speak as though expecting a prize to fall from his lips.

Elaine the scholar, Jean thought. Elaine the mother. Elaine the elderly. She caught Maggie’s eye as she adjusted Elaine’s collar and sent her what she hoped was a sympathetic but not pitying smile. Instead of acknowledging Jean’s smile, though, Maggie’s face puckered into the part frown, part stare of someone not quite able to put her finger on a memory.

Something close to disgust squirmed across Parkinson’s sagging features and died away, replaced with a studied expressionlessness.

Well, well, well. Jean asked, “Or do you know Maggie? When we met at the ferry slip you called her ‘Loony Lauder.’ ”

“They’re both loony, aren’t they? I don’t have the pleasure—ha!—of knowing either of them, thank you just the same. I covered Maggie’s trial back in the nineties, she all prim and proper in the dock, and her mum playing the intellectual, too good for the likes of us reporters.”

Funny about that. Jean voiced not her thought, but another question. “You know the policeman who was attacked here, then.”

“I know of him. Had the guts to stand up and tell the truth, that the trial was rubbish from start to finish.”

“Is that why you came out here to Farnaby yesterday, to see how Maggie was getting along after all these years? Or was her archaeological discovery really all that fascinating to your editor?”

Parkinson’s washed-out eyes, hard as twin marbles, focused on Jean’s. “None of your business, is it, luv?”

“No,” she conceded. “It isn’t.” Alasdair strolled back up the hallway and to her side. Instead of introducing him to Parkinson—no need to sic them on each other—she took his arm and steered him back into the room, toward the corner where Rebecca and Michael were chatting with Hector. From the corner of her eye she saw Parkinson follow Ms. News of the North down the corridor and out the front door.

“Who’s that chap?” Alasdair asked. “A reporter?”

“Yep. The Daily Dish. Actually covered Maggie’s trial way back when. He’d get along really well with Grinsell. A shame they missed meeting each other.”

“Ah,” said Alasdair.

Jean took off her cardigan and draped it over her arm, wondering why, despite the cold climate, British rooms tended toward stuffy. And she answered herself, the Brits saw the enclosing warmth as comfort, whereas she’d been born and raised in a hot climate where a breeze was not a draft to be avoided but a nirvana to be gained.

Hugh strolled toward Jean and Alasdair, his face polished by music and perhaps a wee dram behind the scenes.

“Great concert,” Jean told him.

“Thank you kindly,” he replied. “I’d have phoned you earlier, but folk coming in were telling me about the inspector being attacked and all. Dreadful, just dreadful.”

“That it is.” Alasdair’s voice-of-doom said it all.

“I was after telling you that I’ve had a look round the school and the only chanters I’ve found are new ones. Or newer than the one that’s gone missing from the grave. But in this instance I was thinking no news was bad news, so I never rang after all.”

“Thanks for looking anyway,” Jean told him, and waved him back to the food.

With a smile at Linda, still sacked out in her stroller, Hector headed for a refill. Michael traded his cup to Rebecca for her phone, which he slanted toward Jean. “The inscription in the chapel.”

Wrenching her mind around to the new topic, Jean said, “Oh! Yes, Rebecca made some photos right before we left.”

“This one here’s the best. Though I’m not seeing any horsemen.” A sweep of Michael’s thumb brought up what looked like a moonscape, craters, rills, and all.

Jean took the phone and peered at it. Rebecca had angled her tiny flash so that it illuminated the inscription from the side. The raking light defined each bump and crack as sharply as they were ever going to be without computer enhancement—Tara had said something about Maggie trying to computer-enhance the inscription. “What do you think?”

Michael’s forefinger indicated the top of the stone. “I’m thinking this bit here is hic jacet.”

“ ‘Here lies’. That’s no surprise. But the name of whoever is lying there is illegible. How about Elaine’s uxor draconis, ‘wife of the dragon’? Can you see that, too?”

Jean handed the phone to Alasdair, who turned it this way and that, squinting. “Was Guinevere not the daughter-in-law of the dragon?” he asked, and gave Rebecca her phone. “Pendragon was Arthur’s father, aye?”

“Aye,” said Michael. “And you could be making a case for the Viking raiders as dragons, since they carved dragons on their ships, but they’re not known for inscriptions in Latin. This bit here is uxor, I reckon, but I’m seeing it as ‘uxor domini.’ ”

“Wife of the lord,” Jean translated. “Meaning the lord of the manor?”

“Usually. But here it might could be meaning . . .”

“. . . the bride of Christ,” Jean and Rebecca said in one voice. Rebecca added, “Snap!”

“It’s a convent,” Jean said. “Nuns are considered to be brides of Christ, not a metaphor you want to follow too far. As yet no one’s found anything that keeps the grave from being Mother Hilda’s. Maggie even admits it’s probably hers.”

Linda stirred and whimpered and Michael squatted down to check on her—ever mindful to drape his kilt modestly as he did so. “She’s digging again the morn, aye? The area’s been populated almost two millennia. There’s bound to be bits and pieces lost in the soil.”

Maggie had made a heavy investment in the identity of the burial, not only wanting to vindicate Elaine’s work, but also to justify herself and her mother to Wat. Or his shade, which, thank goodness, didn’t seem to be hanging around. As investments went, she might be looking at a spell in debtor’s prison. Or not. Jean placed her hopes on that teensy glint in the muck at the bottom of the grave. “Maybe she’ll turn up a medieval brooch or something else cool. And photogenic.”

“Anything is possible,” said Rebecca, without adding, Little is probable.

Alasdair made a quick turn and headed back to the door. Ah—Sergeant Darling had returned with Crawford, who got a free pass from Clyde as he entered the room. That was fast. Not that Crawford was either trying to escape the island or hide on it. For one thing, he’d reinstalled his reflective jacket, which made him a sitting duck.

As soon as the fog cleared, Jean thought—not as soon as the sun came out, because it was pushing eight p.m. and the sun had long headed west—but as soon as you could see your neighbor’s hand in front of your face, a lot of people would be staging escapes.

Well, no, the tide should have gone out again, invisibly, meaning the ferry was docked for the night, and even a small boat wouldn’t be able to reach the mainland past the mud flats next to Lindisfarne.

That’s right. As Alasdair had pointed out on the ferry yesterday, small boats could make it to ports in the north or the south, and probably even to the east side of Lindisfarne, independent of the tides. Jean visualized Lance and Rosalie leading a flotilla across to Bamburgh. She was tempted to rush back to the Angle’s Rest, pack her suitcase, and join in the exodus.

But no. This was Alasdair’s case now, and she’d dug herself in by his side.