The Range Rover rolled to a stop. Minty stepped out, gracefully, her leather boots—not quite dominatrix-style, but close—barely pressing down on the gravel. She’d removed her apron and added a tweed jacket and her leather handbag, but otherwise looked as informally formal as she had earlier.
Then a second car drove into the courtyard. A patrol car. Logan. Of course he would still trust Minty. As Jean faded back into the shadows of the Laigh Hall—the far side of the Laigh Hall, behind the boxes—she sensed rather than heard a stir of consternation from the hidden troops.
Logan followed Minty into the Hall and braced himself by the door, his expression that of an executioner testing his rope. Minty herself took several steps closer to the Wallace collection and turned her cool, composed gaze upon Jean. “Here we are, then. Like the shoemaker’s children going without footwear, so the policeman’s doxy creates a blackmail scheme.”
“We cannot have that,” Logan said.
Jean tried what she hoped was a knowing smile. “Has it occurred to you, Constable, that it’s hard to create a blackmail scheme out of thin air? Minty has things to hide. That’s why she’s here.”
“She’s here as a public-spirited citizen reporting a crime,” he replied. “You’d best be coming with me, quietly, now. Inspector Delaney’ll be keen on hearing this story.”
Minty stood draped in shadow like a Roman in a toga. Like a queen in ermine. Good move, figuring out a way of getting rid of Jean long enough to destroy the threatening papers. Minty probably played nothing more than bridge, but still, she was a heck of a gambler.
Jean had to play the hand she held. She pulled her backpack around to the front and reached inside. “You’ll recognize Wallace’s drawing and handwriting.”
A tiny burst of static caused Minty to glance behind her. Logan plucked his radio from his shoulder. Distantly, Delaney’s voice said, “Valerie Trotter’s done a runner. Stop her at her cottage.”
“Valerie Trotter,” repeated Minty, the name edged with venom.
“Sir,” Logan protested, “I—”
“Now, Logan. She’s got to be stopped!”
“Aye, sir.” Logan hurried toward the door. “Come away, Minty, we’ll deal with this later.”
With a glance at Jean that was more calculated than cool, Minty walked across the Hall and into the entrance chamber. Jean stood immobile, not looking at the blank door and the bit of paneling covering the squint. Good move, Delaney. I bet that was Alasdair’s idea, bluff the bluffer.
The sound of Logan’s car roared and then died away. The front door shut, a key turned in the lock, and Minty walked back into the Hall.
Okay. Jean tried to settle the sudden shrill titter of her nerves. Minty was taking an even bigger chance now. If she intended to eliminate Jean as yet another pesky annoyance, Logan would know she’d been here. Of course, he’d cut her enough slack to wrap Edinburgh Castle. Minty’s eyes burned beneath their heavily draped lids. Good, she was getting frustrated. Bad, she was getting frustrated. “Where are these no doubt fictitious documents?”
Stepping forward, Jean laid the sketch and the envelope on top of the box containing Wallace’s other papers. “If you’re so sure they’re fictitious, why are you here?”
“I looked through Wallace’s papers and saw no drawing and certainly no, ah, testament.”
“The drawing was inside a book, The Harp Key. The confession . . .” Jean’s brain lurched. “It was inside that case for cufflinks and stuff. In a false bottom.”
Minty looked down at the box as though it concealed animals with sharp teeth and nervous dispositions. Then she bent toward it, right hand extended, her handbag sliding down her left arm to her left hand. After another long pause, during which she could easily have counted the thumps of Jean’s heart, she stood up holding the drawing and the envelope. A whisper of movement trickled down the main staircase and she looked sharply upwards.
“Birds, bats,” said Jean. “Alasdair says there are both in the rafters.”
“You’re not frightened, here, alone?”
The woman was a fencer as well as a gambler. Fencers, now, they used blunted swords. “Wallace lived here alone. Gerald lived here alone. They got along just fine.”
“They were eccentrics. Especially Gerald, in the fine old British tradition.”
“Traditional but embarrassing. A shame Wallace’s enthusiasms got out of hand, and attracted Ciara. Who knows better than I do what a weirdo she is? She was the last straw, I bet. After all you’d done for the community, she barged in with plans that would have attracted the wrong element. And raised questions about the jewelry.”
Minty didn’t move, didn’t blink.
“You didn’t know about the jewelry, did you, until Angus came home with it? It bought you your cooking school, something you deserved after all your hard work. But Wallace and Ciara, they made trouble for you. A shame you got Angus instead of Ciara. That was Noel’s fault, wasn’t it? These people are so distressingly incompetent.”
“Yes, they are.” Minty’s alabaster complexion was flushing an unbecoming shade of magenta. She scrutinized the drawing of Valerie holding the chest and flipped it over to consider the inventory. A tiny nod, the briefest bob of her head, told Jean that Val’s listing of the jewelry had been spot-on.
“You’ll go after Valerie next, won’t you? You should have eliminated her years ago, but she went away. And now she’s back, insulting you, humiliating you. She deserves a dose of foxglove.”
“Yes.” Minty wadded the drawing and threw it down. She weighed the envelope, set it on the box, then looked up at Jean. Her eyes were glowing coals. “You want your money, is that it?”
Jean stepped back. If she had learned anything from Alasdair, it was to beware drilling beneath an ice cap. Deeply buried under Minty’s layers of frost and polish was, indeed, a molten core.
Jean balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to dodge. “You had the castle renovated and opened. You took the jewelry. Like James III at Roxburgh, you’ve been blown up by your own cannon. Is that why you didn’t want Isabel’s burning-glass, because it’s a mirror and if you look into it you’ll see who’s really to blame?”
“Very clever,” said Minty between clenched teeth. Her right hand inched toward the open top of her handbag.
“Or should I draw the comparison with another monarch? Did you look at Valerie Trotter, did you hear Angus and Wallace talking about her, did you see them sending her and Derek gifts?” Breathe, Jean told herself, and bent her knees. “Did you ever say, in the words of Elizabeth about her cousin Mary, ‘she is lighter of a healthy son, but I am barren stock’?”
“Damn you to hell.”
Not many people, Jean thought, could say that without plastering several exclamation points onto the end.
Minty’s manicured fingers plunged into her bag. From it she whipped out a knife, a carving knife, a long pointed blade gleaming in the uncertain light as though with witchfire. Throwing the bag down, she leaped.
Jean leaped as well, not particularly anxious to see if Blackhall’s vest would turn six inches of doubtless high-quality and well-honed steel. Emitting a deliberate scream—okay! now!—she dodged to the side and toward the door.
Instead of coming straight for her, Minty spun around to block the door. Her face, Jean noted with part of her mind, was perfectly calm except for the eruption in her eyes. The other part of Jean’s mind was palpitating, looking for an escape route—footsteps thundered down the staircase and blows smashed against the front door . . .
Minty lunged toward her, knife raised.
Jean sprang for the staircase, slipped on the dusty, uneven treads, told herself that at least she was wearing athletic shoes—Minty’s boots must be slowing her down. Amazing how fast she could get her muscles to flex despite the extra weight of the armor, with a deadly weapon in a conscienceless hand just behind her.
She had passed the second floor and was heading for the third before she realized she hadn’t met any police heading down. Great, wonderful, glorious, they’d come down the main staircase and she was heading up the secondary one.
Shouts echoed through the building, Alasdair’s voice lifted in something incomprehensible. For all she knew it was the Cameron war cry.
Not the cap house, she couldn’t let herself get trapped in the cap house, with no way out but the parapet. Jean catapulted into a shadowed room on the dark side of the building, twelve panes of wavy window glass admitting only a ghostly gray light. Isabel’s room.
Door. Shut the door.
She spun, seized the knob, pushed. Twine was holding the door open. Knotted twine.
Where was Minty? Had she lost track of her quarry in the upper reaches of the building, confused by echoes? No such luck. The floorboards of the hall were groaning to stealthy steps. The woman wasn’t breathing heavily. She didn’t seem to be breathing at all.
Jean ripped off her backpack, tore open the zipper, dumped everything onto the floor. Her phone went spinning away, its read-out bright as a candle flame. The box, glass lens, glass mirror. She rapped it against the cold, sooty hearth of the fireplace and it broke in her hand, cutting the mound at the base of her thumb with a pain that felt like searing heat. Blood welled, ran down to her wrist, caught in the fibers of Alasdair’s sweater.
With the shard of glass she slashed at the twine. It gave. The door started to slide shut, as though pushed by invisible hands. She threw her weight against it and slammed it just as Minty hit the other side, first with a solid thump and then with repeated blows.
A bolt. There was a bolt. In a desperate spasm of strength, Jean freed the rusty metal rod and jammed it into the catch. She leaped backward so fast she tripped over her bag and crashed down onto her rump, jarring every bone in her body.
A knife blade worked its way between the panels of the door and moved back and forth like a metal tongue. Light. A rosy light was growing in the room, and the air was heavy, crushing her against the planks of the floor.
Footsteps. Voices. A scream of anguish, short and sharp. Jean could hear it vibrating in her ears, on and on, even after the leaden air no longer carried the sound. She heard the clump of heavy feet, blows against the door, a breath gasping in terror that wasn’t her breath at all. She saw red flame spurt suddenly on the hearth and long skirts whisking past her face, and smoke rising, gray, and dense.
Male voices shouted. The door held. The flame died down. The air lifted. And the skirts, the bodice, the little cap, the oval face with its large eyes, all thinned into mist and evaporated.
Jean sat on the floor alone, but not in silence. Again she heard blows against the door, this time not mailed fists but bare hands. A familiar voice called her name, “Jean! Jean!”
She crawled to her feet, tottered to the door, and released the bolt.