The Blue Hackle (3 page)

Did he have red hair, the ill-fated Rory
MacLeod who had chosen the hard place below old Dunasheen over the
sharp edge at his back? How about Greg’s ancestor Tormod, of
dubious but intriguing memory?

Alasdair said, “It’s by way of being a fake,
is it? Well then, the Duke has no call claiming a large insurance
settlement.”

Cold as they were, Jean’s ears twitched, and
she abandoned her wordsmith’s reverie.

A pause while Ian, whose virtues lay in
method rather than imagination, spoke. Then Alasdair replied, “No,
it’s not at all surprising. Crusaders, soldiers, toffs on their
Grand Tours, they’d bring back loads of art, antiques, artifacts,
holy relics—not all of it legally, mind you. And half the time not
knowing what they had, nor caring, come to that, so long as they
put on a good show. There’s a trait’s not yet died out, not by a
long chalk.”

No, it hadn’t, Jean thought, with another
look at the castle. But she couldn’t criticize Fergie and his
daughter and business partner—who, despite Alasdair’s “wee,” was
almost thirty years old—for trying to present a good enough show to
hang onto their house, the physical representation of their own
family tree.

“Cheers, Ian. Enjoy your holiday.” Tucking
the phone into his pocket, Alasdair turned to Jean.

Her feet in their wellies were so cold she
felt as though she was wearing ice buckets, and shuffled rather
than stepped. “Tea,” she reminded him. “Coffee. Maybe a wee dram,
even. A warm fire. One of Fergie’s dogs or our own cat, whatever,
as long as it’s got fur. I’ll get my notebook and lie in wait for
Greg and his murder story. Or Fergie and his plans for saving the
estate, whoever crosses my bow first.”

“Right,” Alasdair said. Once again, they
started off toward the house, this time walking even more
briskly.

Ahead of them, the courtyard gate opened and
shut with a clang. A woman hurried across the gravel terrace and up
the path, arms knotted across the chest of her fake leopard skin
coat. One hand held Fergie’s largest flashlight tucked below her
elbow like a semi-concealed weapon. Luxuriant golden-blond curls
bounced around her pert, tanned face. Her tight red mouth loosened
far enough to say, “Hello there. Have you seen a bloke in a red
jacket?”

“Greg MacLeod?” Alasdair returned. “He walked
down to the old cas—”

“Stupid sod! I told him he could wait ’til
tomorrow, we’ve just arrived, not even unpacked, but no, we’ve come
halfway round the world, he said, what’s a few more yards, dark or
no flipping dark?”

This was “the wife.” At first glance, Jean
thought she was twenty years younger than Greg. At second glance,
Jean realized that she wasn’t at all younger, she was simply
fighting gleaming tooth, painted nail, and hair color a shade too
bright for her complexion, against the forces of entropy.

“I’m Tina MacLeod, Greg’s, well, Greg’s been
going on for years about this godforsaken place, imagine that!”

God had phoned it in a few times out here,
thought Jean, but you could say that of Sydney or Brisbane,
too.

Alasdair’s expression remained neutral.

“London was good, lights, a hotel,
nightclubs, but no, that’s not enough, he’s stuck on the flipping
family tree, been rattling on about it for flipping years. Here we
could be sitting at the C Bar back home, having a cold one beneath
the palms—do you know Townsville, that’s in the tropical part of
Queensland—I read a brilliant story about a miniature dinosaur in
the back garden, made perfect sense.”

Alasdair managed to get a word in. “He’s gone
down to the beach and round to the left.”

“I’d better yank in his lead, then, it’s
almost time for tea. Or drinks, more likely. Anti-freeze. Ta.” She
picked her way past, the wellies she, too, had liberated from the
stash by the back door slapping along the path. A few paces away,
she switched on the flashlight. A bubble of luminescence danced
before her like a will o’ the wisp leading unwary travelers to
their doom.

“Have a care,” Alasdair shouted after her.
“The path’s right slippy.”

“Ta!” Tina said again, without turning
around.

They waited while the light disappeared down
the slope to the bridge, reappeared at the hulking shadow of the
ruined castle, vanished behind the wall. Faintly, Tina’s voice
called, “Cooeee, Greg!”

It was bad luck for a woman or a blond or
red-headed man to be first across the threshold at the new year,
although whether Fergie’s Hogmanay package included that old
custom, Jean didn’t yet know. He could have a twofer with Tina
MacLeod.

Exchanging dubious smiles, she and Alasdair
turned away from the old castle, a dark shadow against the clouds.
Great minds thought alike, but his was less likely to be
visualizing will-o’-the-wisps and doom than pondering how dangerous
ruins could be, and not from anything paranormal . . . It was the
sky that was ominous, Jean told herself, not Skye. A year ago she’d
learned that seasonal affective disorder was a real threat in the
depths of a Scottish winter. It said something about the national
temperament.

As long as the free-range Aussies made it
past the castle, they’d be okay. Even Jean, whose middle name was
not “Grace,” had managed to get from church to castle along the
pebbled beach without mishap.

She and Alasdair pressed on across the gravel
and stepped through the gate into the courtyard. The damp
cobblestones inside glistened with streaks of gold, red, and green.
The arched door in the angle of the wall displayed a wreath of
holly and ivy tied with MacDonald tartan ribbons, hung so that the
Green Man knocker—one of Fergie’s artistic endeavors—peeked
mischievously from its center.

They walked up the three steps to the door.
Alasdair set his hand on the iron handle. From inside came a barely
perceptible strain of music.

Then a long, wavering, shriek, pulsing with
anguish, echoed across land and water and set the gulls to
screeching and flapping upward like winged ghosts.

Jean spun around, her heart lurching. “That’s
got to be Tina!”

Instead of leaping back down the steps,
Alasdair threw the door open. Sweeping Jean with him, he lunged
inside and shouted, “Fergie! Diana!”

She blinked at what seemed like a flood of
light, although it was only the contrast—the aging ceiling fixtures
weren’t emitting more than a yellow glow. This was the back door,
the postern gate, where old and mismatched boots, limp hats, and a
couple of tall vases bristling with umbrellas, walking sticks, and
fishing rods had come to roost.

“Fergie!” Alasdair bellowed, drowning out the
music Jean could now identify as the CD she had given Fergie, the
latest from her friend and neighbor Hugh Munro, who was singing
lustily about heaving away and hauling away, bound for South
Australia.

From the open door behind her came a cold
draft and an ominous—no, not silence, a distant sobbing, wailing
sound that was neither wind nor sea. And Jean doubted it was a
banshee, although on Skye, you never knew.

What had happened? A path given way, a stone
turned beneath an unwary foot, slippery mud, the force of the wind,
the darkness—it was Greg, wasn’t it? He’d been wearing athletic
shoes, not wellies, not that wearing wellies was a guarantee of
traction. Or had Tina herself fallen?

Jean ran back out onto the stone step, but
heard nothing. Funny how her face was now hot, so that the wind
felt like a slap with a wet fish.

Two shapes rushed at her through the
kaleidoscope of light and shadow and with a gasp she jerked back
against the door frame.

A big black lab and a little white terrier
swarmed around her legs, leaving mud and damp on her jeans and the
aroma of wet dog in her nostrils, then stampeded into the house.
The last time Jean had seen them, they’d been dozing in front of
the fire in the drawing room, inert as hassocks.

She reeled back through the doorway to find
Alasdair pulling out his notepad and wallet—there was the phone. He
punched three numbers. “We’re needing an ambulance, someone’s
injured at old Dunasheen Castle—Alasdair Cameron, at the new
castle—Kinlochroy, aye—very good then.”

He clicked his phone shut, jammed it into his
pocket, and bellowed, “Fergie!”

A wet yellow raincoat fell off its hook,
crinkling to the floor. Hugh sang the old sea chantey about South
Australia full of rocks, and fleas, and thieves, and sand. The dogs
had vanished, leaving only a trail of muddy paw prints across the
tile floor.

In a stately home, no one could hear you
scream.

“No one heard you. No one heard Tina,
either.” Jean jittered to the door and the darkness outside, then
to the row of coat hooks, where she replaced the raincoat, then
back across the tile floor to the cabinet where Fergie kept the
flashlights. She grabbed two and handed one of them to Alasdair.
“There’s a bell pull in the drawing room, Fergie used it this
afternoon.”

“Give it tug then, see if it rouses Fergie or
Diana, or one of the Finlays. If not them, then the manager’s
cottage is next the garden. The constable at Kinlochroy’s been
alerted. I’m away back down to the old castle.”

No point trying to convince him to stay put
and wait for help. The roses in his cheeks had perished under a
drift of snow, and his features tautened into his
I’m in charge
here
expression. When he paused on the doorstep to throw her a
crisp, ice-blue glance, she forced her chin up and lifted her left
hand in a wave. “I’ll catch up with you. Be careful!”

And he was gone. The rapid crunch of the
gravel beneath his boots faded. The gate clanged.

Her hand was still extended toward the
darkness. The diamond on her ring finger glinted, a micro-prism
clarifying the brassy ceiling light.

Don’t think about it. Find Diana. Find
Fergie.

Jean spun around, spun back again, shut the
door, and realized she’d tracked mud across the scratched tile
floor—well, who hadn’t, the dogs’ paw prints were only part of what
looked like a child’s finger painting project.

Dumping the flashlight on the nearest surface
and stuffing her scarf and gloves into her pocket, she pulled off
her wellies. Where were the shoes she’d left here earlier? No time
to search.

In her thick wool socks, she skated rather
than ran down the dimly lighted corridor, around a corner, and up a
short flight of steps beneath a moth-eaten stag’s head sporting a
Santa Claus cap. The doors of the Great Hall, the door of the
library . . . She threw open the door of the drawing room,
zigzagged around the furniture to the Gothic Revival fireplace, and
yanked the tasseled end of the bell pull—to no discernible effect.
Whether some distant jangle would attract the attention of a
MacDonald, or of one of the Finlays, resident caretakers and chief
bottle washers, she had no way of knowing. Come to think of it,
this afternoon Fergie had supplemented his yank at the bell pull by
shouting down the hallway.

Alasdair should have phoned Fergie, too.
Where the hell was everyone?

A movement in the corner of her eye jerked
her around toward the tall windows. But it was only her own
reflection wavering in their black, mirrored depths, her crown of
auburn hair turned inside out, her shoulders up around her ears,
her stance that of a prizefighter in a corner of the ring.

What she punched was the “Stop” button on the
CD player.
Sorry, Hugh
. His voice halted between one beat
and the next. Were those footsteps? Jean spun toward the door. No.
She was hearing the tick of a clock.

Dunasheen wasn’t one of those stately
marble-halled homes tricked out with gilt cherubs, the sort of
place that made Jean feel as though she was dragging the knuckles
of all ten thumbs on the floor. This drawing room was friendly and
functional with a Persian rug, needlepoint chair covers, a piano.
The holly jolly crimson and tinsel of the season decorated
mantelpiece and chandelier, while odds and ends from Chinese snuff
bottles to Roman coins to prehistoric fish hooks were installed on
every horizontal surface. An antique screen decoupaged with
flowers, fairies, and saccharine Victorian angels almost managed to
conceal a flat-screen TV set the size of a coffee table.

Jean wondered how many of Fergie’s family
antiques, artifacts, and holy relics had been sacrificed to fund
Dunasheen’s upkeep. But he had enough left to make that good show,
spiced with his own paintings and sculptures.

Was that low murmuring wail, almost a voice
but not quite, the wind in the chimney? Was it Tina screaming
again? Alasdair might not have reached her yet. Maybe he’d slipped
himself, and fallen, and lay broken and bloodied on the rocks . . .
A chill puckered the back of Jean’s neck.

Come on, come on!
She yanked the bell
pull again, then jogged to the door, looked down the hall, and
shouted, “Fergie! Diana! Mrs. Finlay!” Her voice died away into
silence.

Dozens of painted and photographed eyes gazed
accusingly down from the Pompeiian red walls, not least those of
Fergus Mor and Allan Cameron. Fergie’s and Alasdair’s fathers wore
the kilts, tunics, and bonnets or tam o’shanters—stiffened berets
with wool pompoms—of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, an old
and greatly honored regiment. Each bonnet, adorned with a badge and
the colored feathers of a blue hackle, was bent toward the other.
Or Fergus Mor’s, rather, was bent down toward Allan’s,
demonstrating the maximum allowable versus the minimum allowable
regimental heights.

Breathe, Jean told herself. In with the good
air, out with the bad.

The embers piled in the grate emitted more of
an ashy breath than warmth, and the castle’s scents of baking and
furniture polish were tinged with mildew. Perhaps the house had
become the terrestrial version of the
Marie Celeste
,
abandoned to its ghosts.