The Burning Glass (29 page)

Jean drew herself up to her full height, such
as it was, although Delaney hadn’t meant physically little. “I have
an interview with Ciara at the pub at two. Have you talked to her
yet?”

“When we stopped by Glebe House to speak with
Mrs. Rutherford,” Kallinikos answered, “Ms. Macquarrie was with
her.”

“She’s two bob short of a quid, that one is,”
added Delaney. “Mental.”

“How did Minty take the news about Angus?”
Jean persisted. “What about Ciara? Did you ask her about coming out
here with Angus yesterday morning? Did you ask Minty whether she
knew Angus was back—or if she knew where he went, for that
matter?”

Delaney’s eyes shifted from her face to
Alasdair’s. With a grin he asked, “You’ve got a taste for the
gumptious girls, do you, Cameron? Maybe I should be sending over a
pair of trousers.”

Alasdair grasped Jean’s upper arm and pulled,
gently but firmly, as though trying to remove a piece of chewing
gum from his shoe. “Let’s be getting ourselves into town. Later,
Delaney. Sergeant.”

Yeah
, Jean thought, run
away, live
to fight again another day
. She let him pilot her into the
courtyard while Kallinikos shut the door, his classic features awry
with what she hoped was stifled disgust, not amusement, not with
Delaney’s hearty guffaw ringing out behind him.

When they reached the flat she wrenched her
arm away from Alasdair’s guiding hand. “And here I thought I was
making points by keeping my mouth shut while y’all talked to
Valerie.”

“You did that. Best if in the future you keep
quiet the rest of the time as well.”

“So yesterday I’m supposed to report
suspicious lights but today I’m supposed to keep my biscuits in the
oven and my buns in the bed? I’m not going to cater to Delaney’s
Neanderthal sense of humor.”

“He’s in charge here. If he thinks you’re
interfering in the case, then he might cut me out of it.”

“You’re not responsible for my actions!” She
realized her voice was rising.

Alasdair’s was falling, into the soft rasp of
a blade drawn from its sheath. “This is no time for
consciousness-raising, Jean. There’re bigger issues at stake than
your pride.”

“Yeah, like your pride.”

His face frosted over, his gaze going from
the blue of a sunlit sky to the blue of steel. “Right. I’ll be
getting myself dressed. If you’re coming to town with me, you’ll be
doing the same.” He walked off down the hall.

Oh for the love of
. . . Jean shook
her fist at the door, hoping the gesture would filter through to
Delaney’s chubby chin, then with the same fist bopped herself on
the forehead. What did she expect? Since when did Mars’s orbit ever
intersect that of Venus?

They were tired. They were hungry. They were
stressed. She should heat up the leftover soup and make
sandwiches—great, defaulting to the traditional female role, that
was really going to make a statement. Cursing under her breath, she
poured the soup into a saucepan and laid out bread and cheese, then
looked around first the living room and then the bedroom.

Nothing was out of place—she’d give O. Hawick
that much. Dougie, though, was no longer occupying the center of
the bed. She bent over to look beneath. Aha, the fierce watch-beast
was hiding, looking like a bright-eyed dust kitten. “Good idea,”
Jean told him, and straightened up.

Alasdair stood by the dresser, turning the
inscribed flake of gravestone over and over in his hands. “I’ll
have Logan open the museum,” he said, his voice so detached it was
almost clinical. “This needs storing away with the other
pieces.”

“Yes, Ciara agreed with that yesterday. Even
though it might be safer here, considering the break-in,” Jean
replied. Good, her voice was just as neutral. “Minty told me she’d
taken Isabel’s burning-glass home with her, for just that
reason.”

“The burning-glass is listed on the P and S
inventory as belonging to Ferniebank.”

“You want to ask her about it right after her
husband’s been murdered?”

“We don’t yet know that it’s murder.”

Jean bit back some retort about big issues at
stake. Speaking of which . . . “Alasdair, Miranda learned something
from one of Ciara’s investors.

“What’s that?” He opened the wardrobe, held
up a tie, then hung it back up.

“She has a deal to write a book about all the
secret history stuff, you know, Ferniebank as the next three-ring
occult circus. That’s what got the last of the investors on
board.”

He continued to stare at the tie, perhaps
considering making it into a hangman’s noose. “Well then,” he said
dully, “that’s right clever of her. By the by, we were standing
about in the bracken whilst apprehending Derek. Check yourself for
ticks.”

“Ew.” Jean shuddered. “Well, you got that one
off me at Loch Ness.”

Not looking at her, let alone indulging in
any reminiscences, Alasdair collected a business-casual outfit and
headed toward the bathroom.

Jean waited a minute, but didn’t hear any
bottles or brushes crash against the wall. Alasdair didn’t throw
things. He’d be better off if every now and then he did.

She took his place at the wardrobe. Her
laptop and the Ancient Monuments book were still semi-concealed in
the bottom—she’d get to them eventually. Right now, she had to look
respectable, for both police business and the interview. . . .
Damn. How many other reporters would be stalking Ciara, when it was
Jean who had an appointment? At least Noel and the pub would be
doing good business.

By the time she’d checked herself for
blood-sucking parasites, Alasdair had left the bathroom for the
kitchen, where she heard him stirring the soup. If Delaney caught
him at that, would he make another crack about wearing the pants?
Delaney probably couldn’t boil water. As for whether there was a
Mrs. Delaney to do the boiling and take the brunt—Jean shuddered
again.

Dressed in her work uniform of skirt, blouse,
and jacket, but no reporter’s fedora, not yet, she hurried to a
kitchen now fragrant with the warming soup. Alasdair was toasting
sandwiches. Beside him on the counter sat one of the plastic
food-keepers, now holding the inscribed stone chip nestled on a tea
towel like a diamond on velvet. “If Wallace was poisoned—” she
began.

“These dishes might be evidence,” he
finished. “Everything deserves consideration.”

“Like Ciara’s occult stuff,” Jean told him,
hoping for a wind-up and a pitch.

But he wasn’t going to play. “Here, take some
nourishment. You’re looking a bit peelie-wallie.”

He was looking sickly too, but she didn’t
point that out. For a few moments they simply ate. The warm food
loosened the knot in her stomach. So did Alasdair’s face easing
from icy back to merely expressionless. She ventured, “What did
Derek say? Not much, you told Valerie.”

“He played the innocent again, said he was
home asleep both nights, said that he was after impressing Zoe by
picking up something from the crime scene. Not evidence, a
polythene bag or a swab, something she’d recognize from the
forensics shows on the telly. The fact that even we don’t know
what’s evidence and what’s not having escaped him.”

“But you think there’s more to it than
that?”

“That I do. Whether he’s frightened of
telling or simply hanging on to that chip on his shoulder, the one
lads his age develop along with whiskers, I cannot say.”

Shoulder-chips were like epaulettes, symbols
of status, Jean thought. And they weren’t an exclusively male
fashion accessory. “Did Delaney say anything about Minty and
Ciara?”

“By the time Nik and Gary arrived, Minty was
sitting in the kitchen, with Ciara dispensing tea and sympathy.
Ciara told Gary she was working in the guest cottage when she heard
a car in the drive. She looked out, saw Logan going to the front
door, and hotfooted it to the main house.”

“Where Minty had answered the door.”

“Logan told Gary that Minty took the bad news
very bravely, by which I’m guessing he means quietly, no screaming
and the like. Gary’s saying he’s never seen a colder fish.”

“She’s not the expressive sort, no. But then,
neither are you, not at first acquaintance.”

Alasdair’s shake of the head rejected any
comparison. “Ciara was babbling about Angus passing over to a
higher plane and surely his spirit would stay on to help with the
renovations. Nik felt Minty could have done without that sort of
remark, and offered to ring a relation, but Minty said there were
no relations and no need to knock up her friends at that hour,
she’d go on to her room and have a rest.”

“You have to wonder what’s going on behind
that mask of a face.” Jean sighed. “Delaney to the contrary,
Ciara’s not the gold standard of looniness. I’ve known students who
were simply not of this Earth, but . . .”

“She’ll do to be going on with,” Alasdair
stated, with as weary a tone as she’d ever heard him use. “And just
now, we’d better be going on to Stanelaw.”

Alasdair signaled the sentry constable to
open the gate and release their sortie. Jean didn’t try to shield
her face with her reporter’s notebook. She was only a member of the
third estate by default, not by temperament. Rubbing her special
status with the investigation in the faces of this ravening crew
brought her down to their . . . But they were only doing their jobs
in a competitive business. Like Delaney was doing his, in a
business that had its own competitions.

At least now the cameras, the microphones,
the shouting mouths and darting eyes, weren’t on her case like
they’d been during the academic scandal in her past. Judging by
Alasdair’s fissured lips, he was resisting a similar memory. He
jockeyed the car through the journalistic scrum with neither curse
nor comment, and accelerated toward Stanelaw, only to slow at the
layby at the end of the perimeter wall.

A faint, muddy track led into the woods, now
closed off with police tape that looked incongruously cheerful,
like party streamers looped from tree to tree. “If you drove far
down that track,” Jean said, “you’d need a tow truck on stand
by.”

“No need to drive far, just pull into the
trees and walk down to the end of the wall. In any event, Gary’s
folk found no car. Angus either legged it from town or from Glebe
House, if he’d gone back there.”

“Or flashlight-person could have driven him
out here, then made his, her, its getaway.”

“Aye.” Just as Alasdair picked up speed past
Ferniebank Farm, a tall figure leaped through the gate and raised
an arm the size of a leg of lamb in the universal gesture of
Halt!

Alasdair hit the brakes, throwing Jean
forward into the seat belt. Her hand pressing her heart back into
her chest, she looked around to see that the imperious figure was
neither the ghost of Hamlet’s father nor of Angus roaming in broad
daylight.

Roddy Elliot opened the back door of the car
and pleated himself into the interior. He was dressed in his Sunday
best, a rusty suit and a striped tie hanging askew. “If you’d not
object to driving me to the kirk, Mr. Cameron, I’d be willing to
overlook the matter of the fishing tackle. I’ve left it a bit late
to walk. Those reporters were on my doorstep like crows after
carrion. Had to offer to set the dogs on them.”

“Ah, well.” Alasdair swallowed, probably
repositioning his own heart. He accelerated again, if only a
little. “Certainly, Mr. Elliot. When are services?”

“Noon.” Each slow word in Roddy’s deep voice
sounded like the toll of a bell. “Normally I’d not hold with such
foolishness as that new female minister, but I’m thinking that the
word of the Lord can withstand the voice it’s delivered in, no
matter how dainty.”

The wisest fool in Christendom
, Jean
thought. She extended her hand around the headrest. “Hello, Mr.
Elliot. I’m Jean Fairbairn.”

Doubtfully, he took her small, soft hand in
his huge, calloused one and released it. “How do you do. A relation
of the Fairbairns of Selkirk, by any chance?”

“Not that I know of, no, but my
great-grandfather did come from Stow, near Galashiels.”

“But you’re a Yank, like that Keith Bell
chap.”

“Yes.” Jean wasn’t sure if that was something
he expected her to apologize for, so she used it as an excuse to
ask, “Have you seen Keith and Ms. Macquarrie’s plans for
Ferniebank?”

“My daughter was showing me a folder with
drawings,” Roddy answered.

One beat, two. “What did you think of them?”
prodded Alasdair.

“Madness, the lot of it. The Rutherfords
would have done better to tear the place down and sell the stone.
Muckle good stone in those buildings, but little else save
treachery and sorrow.”

Treachery
, Jean repeated silently. “I
hear Wallace enjoyed researching the history of the area.”

“Wallace was a nutter, like that Macquarrie
female, spying, blaspheming—” He stopped dead, then added, “But he
was a grand fisherman, for all that.”

Jean didn’t expect him to expand his comments
to include Wallace’s supposed role in Helen’s death, and sure
enough he didn’t.

“Have you had the police as well this
morning?” Alasdair’s mild tone emphasized the “as well,” claiming a
brotherhood that didn’t strictly exist.

“That I have. That dark chap with the queer
name, polite enough, but I had to put him in his place when he
started in with questions that were none of his business.”

“Questions about Angus?” Jean asked.

“With them finding the man dead at the old
romanish chapel, and me hearing someone legging it up the road, I
reckon looking for clues was his business.” Roddy’s bemused tone
indicated that a clue was some exotic species of butterfly.

No one corrected his “them.” Slowing down so
far an arthritic snail could have outpaced them, Alasdair said,
“Your granddaughter Zoe was visiting the castle Friday. Does she
stop with you often?”