The Blue Hackle (7 page)

“Who?” Alasdair joined her at the window.

“The team from Portree, that’s less than an
hour away, but . . . oh. Wait.”

The headlamps slowed, made a right-angle
turn, and stopped, illuminating the facade of a stone cottage. Then
the lights went out. A shadowy figure moved from car to cottage, a
door opened, and a window lit up.

“That’s Lionel Pritchard, Fergie’s manager,”
Alasdair said. “Leastways, that’s his cottage.”

“Fergie said it was his day out. I guess he
hasn’t heard the news or he’d come up to the house.”

Leaving the curtains open—only a human fly
would be able to see in a third-story window—Jean stepped back into
the warm aura of the heater. “Greg went down to the beach right
after he and Tina got here, and was alone for only twenty minutes.
There’s not much chance he just happened to run into a mortal
enemy. And why would a total stranger kill him? He must have known
his murderer.”

“Or his murderer knew him.”

“Whatever. How many people could he have
known so far away from home?”

“Dozens. More. Maybe he’s traveled here again
and again. Maybe he’s in constant contact with half the folk on
Skye. And just now our list of suspects includes all of them.”

“Surely you’ll be able to eliminate most of
them.”

“I’ll not be doing it, that’s Gilnockie’s
job.”

“Sure it is.” Jean knew full well that once a
detective, always a detective.

Alasdair’s lopsided smile registered her
point. “I’ll be dialing back the territorial imperative, all
right?”

“It’s not up to me,” she told him. “Patrick
Gilnockie, isn’t it? He took your position when you retired last
August.”

“Oh aye. You’ve never met him.”

“No, I haven’t. You said he was older than
you, which made me wonder why he was lagging behind you in
promotions. If he isn’t as bright as you, though, he wouldn’t have
taken over for you.”

“He’s sharp as a tack, no worries there, a
grand detective. He was not as committed as me to the police work
is all, but then, he did not burn himself out.” Alasdair didn’t
have to add,
like I did
. Jean had been there at the slow
fizzle and sudden flare of the embers.

She murmured, “He wasn’t as likely to be
committed as you. You know, institutionalized?”

Doing her the courtesy of ignoring the bad
joke, Alasdair peered out into the gloom.

“The murder had to have been premeditated,”
she told his back. “It wasn’t suicide—knives don’t get up and walk
away. It wasn’t an accident—oops, I didn’t mean to kill him, I was
just cleaning my knife and it went off. And I don’t see how twenty
minutes could be long enough to generate a crime of passion, you
know, the argument, the shoving match, the weapon drawn.”

His reflected expression was both bemused and
amused. “You’re making bricks without straw, Jean. Mind you, I’m
agreeing with you, for the most part. Greg meant to meet someone at
the church. Whether that someone is the murderer, or knows who the
murderer is, we’ll be seeing. It’s possible he killed himself and
the someone took away the knife, but without further evidence, I’m
thinking there’s no need to go complicating matters any further
than they already are. As for an argument, well, some arguments
fester for centuries.”

Putting rings on each other’s fingers and
daggers in each other’s hearts
. Yeah, she’d had to say that,
hadn’t she? But free association was her specialty. So was color
commentary. “There aren’t too many arguments festering on this side
of the Irish Sea, not fatal ones, anyway, not any more.”

“When we know the why,” said Alasdair, “then
we’ll know the who.”

She smiled at him saying “when” rather than
“if.” “And when we know the who, then we’ll know the why.”

“Oh aye.” He looked around and up. At first
Jean thought he was again considering Fergie’s painting, an
interpretation of the legend of St. Michael and the dragon.
Archangel and beast were entwined in mortal and gaudy combat,
silver lance against green scales, both splashed with crimson.
Michael’s helmeted face might look like a canned potato and his
lance like a ray gun, but Fergie’s figures had a blocky integrity,
and his design was quite nice, dragon and man resembling a knotwork
figure from the Book of Kells.

But Alasdair hadn’t turned art critic; he was
looking at the small, ornate clock. “It’s going on for five.
Portree should be arriving soon. Gilnockie, though, he’s got a long
road.”

“Only a Brit would think that less than a
hundred-and-fifty miles was a long road.” Jean visualized the route
south along Loch Ness, then west past Eilean Donan Castle of a
million postcards and calendars, over the Skye Bridge and across
almost the entire island. “The roads are all two-lane, no
single-tracks until you’re past Dunvegan, and the odds of getting
behind a caravan/camper trailer or tour bus are next to nothing
this time of year.”

“In daylight and fine weather,” he replied,
“you could be driving the route in maybe three, three and a half
hours. In the dark and wet, well, he’ll likely be here by nine,
depending on how long he’s spent assembling his team.”

As though summoned by his words, another set
of headlights flashed beyond the window. Alasdair spun around like
a cat spotting a canary and Jean trotted to his side. Two vehicles
materialized in the glow of lights from the house and stopped
beside the Krums’ SUV that still sat in the middle of the gravel
parking area.

A patrol car and a small panel van disgorged
assorted human figures, which donned reflective canary-colored
jackets and fired up flashlights. The cavalry might be arriving,
but from here it looked more like the circus.

The clock on the mantel emitted a tinny,
tinkly version of the Westminster chimes and struck five times.
From somewhere in the house a deeper version of the same was
followed by the two sonorous notes of a doorbell. “Now it’s decided
to start working again,” Jean said.

“You’re not in the hall playing footman just
now.” Alasdair picked up his coat and gloves. “Portree wants
guiding to the scene. You’re coming out as well, are you?”

A spousal point to the man for asking. She
replied, “Thanks, but no. I’ll see if there’s something I can do to
help Fergie and Diana. Poor Fergie, the last thing he needed was a
fatality. And yes, I know, the situation is a lot harder on the
MacLeods.”

Dougie was sleeping soundly. Food, drink, and
sanitary facilities were available in the dressing room—he could
spend his holiday in the suite, no need to get closer acquainted
with the household dogs. Switching off first the electric fire and
then the overhead light, Jean joined Alasdair in the hall and
waited while he locked the door, then handed her an extra key. He
didn’t need to point out that half the people in the house would
have keys. There was a murderer afoot.

Jean and Alasdair didn’t need a trail of
breadcrumbs or a ball of string to find their way. In the course of
their heritage-industry duties, they’d learned how to navigate this
sort of pile, from artifact to artwork to antique. You passed the
tapestry depicting the Irish myth of Grainne, Fionn, and
Diarmuid—faded threads telling a soap-operatic tale of passion,
jealousy, and death. You turned left at the sculpture of a goblin
holding a functioning if dim light bulb. You turned right at the
suit of armor with a pink handbag slung over one steel gauntlet and
a pink feather boa looped across its breastplate. You went straight
ahead past the mock-Tiffany stained-glass window depicting a
mermaid that Fergie had rescued from a biscuit factory scheduled
for demolition.

On their arrival yesterday, he had given Jean
and Alasdair a more comprehensive tour than usual, since they were
friends—and prospective sponsors—of the family. Despite its faint
smell of mildew, Dunasheen was indeed a fairy-tale castle, a
fabulous warren of a place. Some areas were beautifully fitted out,
fabrics brushed, wood gleaming. Others were still works in progress
or works never undertaken. The place was romantic, oh yes, and
mysterious, although “mysterious” was not a word Jean planned to
use in her article for
Great Scot
. Assuming an article was
still viable, now.

Alasdair strode on ahead, the floor emitting
a series of squeaks and creaks beneath his tread, and stopped
beneath the arch leading onto the turnpike stair. He cast a
jaundiced look at the sprig of mistletoe dangling from the light
fixture. No, it wasn’t a good time to put the provocative
vegetation to use.

Voices echoed up the spiral staircase,
Diana’s dulcet tones saying, “. . . I don’t believe we should be
doing that, in the circumstances.”

“We’ve got no choice. It’s part and parcel of
the plan,” Fergie said, his mild tones whetted.

Alasdair looked at Jean. Jean looked at
Alasdair. Plan? Fergie’s ploy to exchange security advice and
favorable publicity in return for a wedding? Or his plan to reveal
another marketing gambit along with their private viewing of
Dunasheen’s most famous artifact, the Fairy Flagon?

“As you wish—” began Diana.

“It’s not my wish, we agreed—”

“Very good,” she stated, her voice sharpened
to a gingersnap. Light steps went down the stairs to the first
floor and faded away.

No need to point out to either Diana or
Fergie that a murder on the doorstep did have a tendency to make
the best-laid plans gang agley. No need to let them know they’d
been overheard.

After a discreet pause, Jean and Alasdair
started down the staircase. “Mind the tripping stane halfway
along,” he reminded her, “the one Fergie was going on about.”

Oops.
Jean grabbed for the handrail, a
stiffened rope strung through giant metal eyelets, and placed her
feet even more carefully on the long, slightly dished steps like
misshapen slices of stone pie. There it was. One of the treads was
half the height of the others, designed to trip up a charging
attacker and let a defender get the drop on him.

Just as they had the first times she’d gone
up and down and up again, her five-and-a-half senses detected a
chill gathered in that spot, a different sort of chill than that of
the draft sliding invisibly up the shaft. This time, instead of
pushing through the spot, she stopped.

The back of her neck puckered at a ripple of
emotional energy, at the catch between her shoulder blades and the
weight on her shoulders that signaled a leak from the next
dimension. “Do you feel that?”

“Oh aye,” said Alasdair, his presence at her
back mitigating the chilly creep of her flesh. “There’s a wee bit
ghostie just here, not near as strong as some, though.”

“Fergie said a guest told him he was pushed
by invisible hands here.”

“He tripped himself up. I’ve never yet sensed
a ghost could push. As I’ve told Fergie . . .”

Fergie looked around the curve of the stair,
ponytail lank, brow corrugated. Reseating his glasses on his nose
and forcing his sagging jowls into a smile, he completed Alasdair’s
statement. “Ghosts are no more than recordings, not quite video,
not quite audio, another sense entirely.”

Oops again. Unlike Diana, Fergie hadn’t gone
on his way. As for his words—Jean rounded on Alasdair. “You told
him you’re allergic to ghosts? I thought that was your best-kept
secret.”

“Kept from most folk,” said Alasdair. “I’ve
told you.”

“No, you showed me.”

“I was no more than twelve at the time I
showed Fergie,” Alasdair explained. “I was not aiming to show
anyone anything, but I’d not yet learned what you’re calling the
great stone face routine.”

Fergie’s face slipped into a reminiscent
smile. “We were standing in a passageway at Stirling Castle,
Alasdair watching someone walk by who wasn’t there, half buckled
with the weight of his own sight. That was my reward for agreeing
to look after such a young lad, and me graduated from university
and engaged to be married. Not the first time Alasdair’s knocked me
back a step or two.”

Alasdair’s expression was far from stony, if
less than enthusiastic.

“But I never picked up a thing,” Fergie went
on. “When it comes to the supernatural, I’m tone-deaf, color-blind,
and numb, more’s the pity. There are some say that Dunasheen has a
guardian spirit, the ghost of my ancestress Seonaid MacDonald, the
Green Lady. Some say Rory MacLeod falls from the old castle tower,
again and again. You couldn’t prove either by me.”

Jean wasn’t sure whether to boggle more over
the image of Alasdair as a child or of Fergie actually wanting to
sense ghosts.

Fergie’s smile reversed back into a worried
frown. “I was coming to tell you that the cops from Portree have
gone round the back and are waiting at the courtyard gate.”

“Thank you kindly, Fergie. I’ll try getting
back for dinner.” With a stylized salute, two fingers to the end of
his eyebrow, Alasdair walked on down.

Skipping the issue of whether Alasdair had
told Fergie about her own allergy, she offered their host a
consolatory smile—
I know how you feel, believe me, I
know
—and plowed ahead. “Do you happen to know what Greg
MacLeod’s occupation was?”

“He told me he’d recently sold a factory
manufacturing tourist paraphernalia, soft toy kangaroos, T-shirts,
didgeridoos. He said something about investments in property, and
how he’s dealing in art and starting up a museum of religion, an
antipodean version of the one by Glasgow Cathedral. There’re
brochures from the Glasgow museum in his and Tina’s room, I saw
them when I brought her back to the house.”

“The St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and
Art. I love the place, and not just because it was one of my first
articles for
Great Scot
. . . Hold that thought. Be right
back. Alasdair! Wait up!” Jean galloped on down the stairs and into
the entrance hall.