Ciara’s smile withered into bafflement. “I beg your pardon, Inspector Delaney? Alasdair, what’s all this in aid of?”
Alasdair mumbled something beneath his breath that sounded like “stupid cow.” His eyes, Jean saw at second glance, weren’t cold as sea-ice after all, but scorched by heat.
Blackhall took Ciara’s arm and pulled her unresisting from the chair. “Is this your bag? I’ll just bring it along, then.”
Briefly Jean saw with Ciara’s eyes—her own features registering shock and awe, Alasdair smoldering, Delaney smug. And beyond, every face in the pub turned toward her, sentences hanging half-finished, glasses and forks suspended in mid-air, billiard cues held aloft. “Oh,” Ciara said, her voice suddenly very small. “Here’s me, thinking they simply passed over. But they died defending secret knowledge, just as Isabel did. Her romance is going on, and we’re playing our own parts in it.”
And that, Jean thought, her gaze glancing off Alasdair’s like a water droplet off a hot iron, that was what was wrong with romance.
Kallinikos cleared a way through the crowd, people stepping back as though from a procession of lepers ringing their bells. Stuffing her notebook into her bag next to the box with the ambiguous burning-glass—yeah, fires can really get away from you—Jean followed Alasdair and Delaney. Photographers materialized and cameras clicked. Outside, in the sudden sunlight, Logan and two other constables formed a human dam.
Two patrol cars waited at the curb. Ciara went quietly, allowing herself to be placed into the first car with Blackhall as companion.
Around the corner from the beer garden came the sandy-haired detective constable and O. Hawick. Hawick was actually grasping Keith’s arm, even though he gave the impression he was hauling Keith along by the scruff of his neck. Keith stumbled and his glasses slid down his nose. His gaze darted here and there like a mad mouse ride at a carnival and then crashed to a halt on Jean’s face. “You gotta call my firm in Glasgow, the American ambassador, whoever. I’m in deep doo-doo here.”
Jean opened her mouth, but the only sound that came out was a squeak.
“I shoulda bailed out ages ago. They’re nuts, all of them—that damn Angus, face of a horse, jawbone of an ass.”
“D.C. Linklater,” said Delaney, “did you not caution the man?”
“That I did,” Linklater replied, with a shushing gesture toward Keith.
Keith spotted Ciara’s wan but very brave face in the rear window of the car. “Okay, okay, she’s a lot of fun already, but I’m not going to jail for her.”
Linklater seized Keith’s other arm and with Hawick frog-marched him to the second car, where Kallinikos was holding the door open. “We all ate the same stuff, when Angus went green around the gills I figured he had an ulcer or something—hey!” Keith protested as the three men packed him into the car, an operation that reminded Jean of cramming Dougie into the pet carrier.
Even after Kallinikos climbed in behind Keith and shut the door, she could still hear the young man’s flat but far from soft voice, “Come on, people, this is all a really big mistake.”
“Away with you. I’ll catch you up at Kelso.” Delaney gestured and two or three more police people sorted themselves into the vehicles. “Logan, bring a car round for me.”
The police cars headed out, each trailing reporters like a honeymooner’s car dragging tin cans and old shoes.
Pushing aside the leftover gawkers, Logan marched toward a third patrol car down the street. His face, Jean saw, was set with satisfaction. And she also saw, across the way, Minty standing with her usual brittle dignity in the doorway of the museum. But even as Jean watched, her lips parted in an unusual, slow, and even sensual smile. So the interloper’s turned out to be the murderer. She’ll get her comeuppance, then. But if Jean couldn’t see Ciara breaking and entering, she certainly couldn’t see her killing.
A murmur was Alasdair and Delaney speaking fast and low, each voice overriding the other. “ . . . Roddy Elliot about the inscription,” said Alasdair.
“I know, I know,” Delaney replied.
“Shannon, Zoe, their parents . . .”
“ . . . I’m on it.”
“. . . that answerphone tape—it’s never Ciara. And the keys, have you . . .”
“We’re on it.”
“Valerie Trotter . . .”
Logan’s car pulled up. He leaned across to open the door. Alasdair stepped toward it, but Delaney cut him off. “No.”
“Gary!”
“No! Love her, hate her, makes no matter to me. You’re too damn close to her. That’s all.” One meaty hand shoving Alasdair aside, Delaney wedged himself into the car and slammed the door.
The car sped up the street, leaving Alasdair standing on the curb. The crowd eddied around him, then dispersed. Jean tried to take a deep breath but it caught like a thistle in her throat. Delaney had just thrown Alasdair off the case because of his previous marital track. Bloody hell.
A movement in the corner of her eye was Michael, the bag of his pipes beneath his elbow and the drones resting on his shoulder like a soldier sloping arms. Beside him Noel was wringing both his hands and a dishtowel. “They ate here—why weren’t the lot of them poisoned as well as Angus—no one will stop here ever again.”
“Not a bit of it. I’m thinking you’ve got a right tourist attraction here.” Michael indicated the people surging back into the pub, the door swinging as though it was the revolving variety.
So many others were swamping the garden gateway that Zoe was pressed up against the side of the wall. “Dad? We’ve got orders but Val cannot help, she’s away with Derek.”
“I’ll play again, shall I? Music having charms, savage breasts, and so forth.” Michael nudged Noel toward the influx, called over his shoulder to Jean, “I’m expecting the full account soon as possible,” and was swept away with the others.
With a feeble nod, Jean looked around. Minty had vanished and the door of the museum was shut tight. Alasdair was standing as still as the statue of some historical worthy, set up in the marketplace only to be forgotten, useful to no one but roosting pigeons. Damn Delaney. Damn Ciara—there was the jawbone of an ass, not Angus.
Again pipe music sounded from the garden, this time the bittersweet melody of “Dark Island.” Jean wished she could pick Alasdair up and carry him away to one of the Outer Hebrides. But then, he’d fight his way back here if he had to swim. She set her hand on his shoulder. She could have played his tendons like the strings of a harp. “Alasdair?”
His hands clenched and loosened. He shut his eyes and opened them. His jaw worked. “Jean.”
“I take it the results of the toxicology tests came in?”
“Oh aye.”
The police worked fast, then, their wonders to perform. “Angus and Wallace, Delaney said. What about Helen?”
“Helen died of natural causes. Heart failure. But the men . . .” Alasdair turned his back to the street. His face was a desert island composed of nothing beyond fire and ice. “Heart failure as well, but brought on by a dirty great dose of glycoside. Scrophulariacae. Digitalis purpurea. Foxglove.”
“Foxglove,” Jean repeated. “But lots of people take digitalis as a medicine. It can work differently in the elderly. Therapeutic overdoses aren’t uncommon.”
“Wallace was taking another medication, not digitalis. Angus was not taking anything.”
“I see.”
“When I was a lad in Fort William, we believed that poking a finger into a foxglove bell would kill you. It’s common knowledge it’s a poison. It’s readily available and fast-working. Angus had his dose at the dinner here. There were bread and herbs in the vomit by the chapel wall, and Noel says he served focaccia amongst other dishes, though Angus likely got his dose in the dessert or the coffee, else he’d have dropped just there at the pub. Wallace got his dose in his dinner as well. One that someone brought to him.”
Jean asked the unavoidable question. “Why arrest Ciara?”
“Those wee stars from her earrings, the chapel, the pit prison, one actually clinging to Angus’s clothing. It’s like she was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.”
“That doesn’t even rise to the level of circumstantial evidence.”
“The torch in the well. Her fingerprints were on it. Her hair was on Angus’s cap. There was well-scum on that pink jacket of hers. The mud on Keith’s car matches that from the layby.”
“That still doesn’t mean either Ciara or Keith killed him. They were having their differences, but . . .” Alasdair didn’t know the full wretched excess of Ciara’s plans, did he?
His hard, uncompromising eyes focused beyond Jean, beyond the pub, beyond the town. “I told Gary he was moving too fast. She’d never have thought to leave the area. But no, she had means, she had opportunity. He’s thinking he can intimidate her into revealing a motive. Good luck to him. Arguing with Ciara’s like punching a marshmallow. You’ll just knacker yourself, and she’ll never feel a thing.”
And here I am, Jean thought, teaching myself to fight back. She removed her hand from his shoulder, not quite worried that he hadn’t shaken her away, not quite grateful. “Did she do it?”
That he hesitated before answering told her at least part of what she wanted to know. At last he said, “No. She didn’t do it. She’s not got it in her. Nor has she a motive, not that I can see.”
“What is the killer’s motive, then?”
“Something doing with Ferniebank, has to be. There’s always a reason for murder, if only in the killer’s own mind.” The harsh lines of his eyebrows and lips eased, if microscopically. “Delaney’s left no more than a skeleton crew at Ferniebank, if you’ll pardon the expression, and yet it’s Ferniebank that’s the point of the exercise. Let’s get on with it.”
Alasdair started off down the street so fast, Jean had to almost run to keep up. Get on with what? she wondered. And answered, the job. Free-lance knight errantry. Among all the other issues, there was now a maiden—er, a matron in distress.
He opened the car door for Jean, climbed in, and started the engine. In edgy but not uncompanionable silence, he drove up the High Street and out of town.
A few brushstrokes of purple-pink on the hills betrayed the presence of late foxglove blooms. The leaves would still be there, though, even if the flowers had passed. You could dry the leaves, you could soak them, you could add a pinch here and a dram there. . . .
The church stood deserted, no sexton digging another grave beside the two that still gaped. The Glebe lay still and silent. Behind it hunkered the cooking school, with all its dishes and implements and little bottles of spice. “It’s easy enough to put poison into someone’s food,” Jean said. “And they’re all working with food.”
“Minty’s school, the pub, Roddy’s dairy, Valerie and her bakery,” said Alasdair. “Her uncle and his shop, come to that.”
“Did you hear Zoe telling Noel that Valerie took off right after the police did?”
“Aye, I did that.”
“Didn’t she ask you yesterday whether there was going to be any more digging at Ferniebank before Ciara took over?”
“A question that now seems a bit more than idle curiosity. I’ll have one of the Ferniebank constables bring her in—like as not they’re still thinking I’m persona grata.”
“Delaney . . .”
“Bugger Delaney.” Alasdair’s jaw was set in concrete, his hands gripped the wheel as though it was Delaney’s throat, and yet his breathing had slowed to its normal watchful pattern. He wasn’t speeding or cutting corners. The drive, Jean hypothesized, was a contemplative exercise.
She said, “Ciara’s taken courses at Minty’s school. She’s been staying at the Glebe all month. It would be easy enough to get into the kitchens, prepare the poison, sneak it into Angus’s food. Especially since she planned the dinner to begin with. Sorry.”
“We’re obliged to consider all the possibilities.”
“Then don’t you have to consider the spouse? Would Minty have a motive to kill her husband? I sure wouldn’t want to get on her bad side. How many years has she been dissing Valerie, do you think?”
“I’m wondering why Val got up her nose to begin with.”
“For refusing to suck up to her, maybe? Noel was saying something about those who tug their forelocks for a living, and that’s him and his family and Logan—well, Roddy and Zoe aren’t exactly with the program. Maybe one of the peasants got fed up and poisoned Angus, although you’d think Minty would be the target. I mean, why go for the adjutant when you can get the general?”
“Maybe Minty was the target. That’s the disadvantage of poison, getting it into your intended victim. But then, the advantage of poison is that it gives you a grand alibi. Most poisoners are only caught when they do it again and then again.”
“You suspected Wallace was poisoned—heavens, you suspected Helen was poisoned—but no one investigated until Angus went down.”
“Exactly. Once someone solves a problem by, say, embezzling, they’ll solve the next problem the same way, not stopping when they’re ahead. Ciara’s always overdoing, and yet . . .”
There was Ferniebank Farm, showing no signs of life, human, canine, or bovine. Roddy, too, had a date with Delaney. And there were probably detectives drying dishes in the pub kitchen, all the better to hurl questions at a passing Brimberry. “The killer was trying to solve the problem of Ferniebank. But what problem is that? Wallace wasn’t trying to stop the sale or anything. He told you himself he was happy about it. And it’s too late for Angus to renege on the sale or retract the planning permission. Ciara was saying they could all vanish and the conference center would go through as planned, it’s all set.”
“Is it now?” Alasdair stopped in front of the closed gates of the castle. The tarpaulin covering the gate twitched and P.C. Freeman peered through the iron bars. But no, the media mob hadn’t hared back this way. Yet.
With its usual creak, the gate swung open. Alasdair maneuvered the car into the courtyard, brought it to a halt beneath the eaves of the trees, and slammed the door behind him so emphatically that crows squawked and a detective glanced out of the incident room.
Freeman started to push the gate shut. In two economical gestures, Alasdair stopped him and summoned a second constable from the front steps of the castle. “. . . wee house, Gillyflower Cottage . . .” That’s right, he’d been there when Valerie gave her address to Delaney the first time around.
Jean waited beside the car, looking around as curiously as though she’d never seen Ferniebank before. The castle hid its secrets behind the gray precipice of its facade. The chapel hid its secrets behind the whispering leaves of the trees. Maybe Roddy was right, and the place should be torn down and sold for stone. And the grounds sown with salt, for good measure. Would Isabel’s ghost still run, then, over land ruined not by nature but the passions of man?
Freeman climbed into his patrol car, drove through the gate, and headed south. The other constable took over his post at the gate. With a mini-smile of satisfaction, Alasdair returned to Jean. “All right then. What else was Ciara saying?”
Jean groaned, but steeled herself to the task. By the time he unlocked the door of the flat and waved her inside, she’d not so much led him through Ciara’s maze, with its illogical branches and dead ends, as gotten him lost with her.
He stood in the doorway, less stunned, Jean estimated, than resigned. Then he ran his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck, as though wiping away cobwebs, and shut the door. “The glass, Mary’s letter, the harp, Gerald’s papers and all—where’s your chain of custody? Where’s your provenance? And Edward Tempest sounds to be the hero of a bodice-ripper romance.”
“A family of Catholics named Tempest lived in Yorkshire—they probably were involved in the 1569 rebellion, although whether there was an Edward here . . . ” Jean shrugged. “Ciara’s version of the occult fantasies that are going around is barely ten percent original, if that much. There are Sinclairs pontificating at this very moment about their loyalty to the Stuart cause and secret Catholicism and the Holy Grail. Even the sculptures being musical notes—I’ve heard something similar about Rosslyn. Religion as puzzle rather than as dogma is quite the fad these days. As for historical veracity—who cares?”
“Ciara’s share is that the Scottish monarchs conspired with the Templars to send the Magdalen’s relics to America, is that it?”
“I’m not even sure that’s original. It’s the Ferniebank angle that’s new. And there’s no telling how much of that is Wallace’s, let alone Gerald’s. Minty was right, this sort of thing takes on a life of its own.”
“And Ciara’s sprung this on one and all in just the last two days?”
“Apparently so,” Jean said. “What I’m really wondering is why one more book on all of this stuff got such a big advance from a publisher. I mean, okay, Ciara’s got writing credentials, but she’d have to have something special . . .”
Alasdair’s eyes were taking on the thousand-yard stare of the combat veteran, although his version was closer to a thousand-year stare.
“Well,” Jean concluded, “she’s either a superb charlatan, a nut case, or a businesswoman giving the customers what they want.”
“All three, I reckon, though she’s not aware of the first.”
“And there I was talking to Miranda just the other day about marketing belief systems. Myth as . . . Well, there’s nothing wrong with myth per se.”
“The danger comes in hiding from the fact that they’re myths.” Having issued his manifesto, Alasdair strode on down the hall toward the bedroom.
Amen to that, Jean thought, and then, with a blink and a breath, noticed how dark and dreary the flat seemed after the bright sunlight and soft breezes outside. She could still smell the soup they’d reheated for lunch. And Dougie had made an aromatic deposit in his litter box, which was as good an editorial comment as any on the present situation.
She dumped her bag and started opening windows, so that the fresh air, the rustle of the trees, and the rush of the river filtered inside. She cleaned the litter box and located the culprit, who was asleep in the center of the bed with his tail draped over his nose like a furry gas mask.
Alasdair had changed into jeans and a T-shirt reading “Real Men Wear Kilts.” “I’m for having a wee keek at Wallace’s boxes. I reckon Ciara’s got his copies of Gerald’s papers, and everyone else in the area’s had time to pick them over, but still, there might be something interesting there.”
And it’s something to do, Jean concluded. No question of stopping for a rest, even though his face was showing the strain, his mouth stretched taut as a twisted rope. “Be right with you,” she told him, and didn’t so much change her clothes as gird her loins with denim and a Great Scot T-shirt. What she told herself was that something had to give soon. Just as long as it wasn’t Alasdair.