A Kind of Grief (29 page)

The paintings were returned.

“The still life painting of the onions, it's not here,” Joanne told the delivery man.

“Nothing to do wi' us,” he said.

She read the document that accompanied the inventory. “Says here they have shipped it down to London for ‘further examination.' ”

“At least it's not off to Glasgow and the esteemed Dougald Forsythe to pontificate over it,” McAllister commented.

“Meow.” Joanne laughed.

“Why that one?”

“It had such a beautiful frame,” she answered. “Maybe it's genuine.”

“Hope so. It would go well over the mantelpiece of our new house.”

“Have we got it?” It wasn't that she'd forgotten. More that she didn't want to think about moving. She dreaded packing up, clearing out. She had married a man who could afford professional help, not hire a man with a van and a boy and a dog. But the thought of strangers poking through her possessions, except for the lifting and carrying, she hated.

“I haven't heard,” he said. “I was expecting to know by now. I'll call Angus MacLean tomorrow.”

She could see he was distracted. The rehanging of the pictures had motivated him to unpack the last two boxes of books. That most of the volumes had gone to the attic—another place that needed a clearing out were they to move—McAllister thought logical.

Joanne didn't. After her father had died, after her mother had had to move out of the manse, her sister was left with the job of dealing with the detritus of thirty-two years in the same house. Joanne hadn't been allowed to help, but her sister's stories of the woodworm in the furniture, broken crockery, moldy books, and moth-infested rugs and blankets and curtains being carted off to the town dump were a warning to both sisters.

“If you don't use it, look at it, care for it for more than a year, then give it away, or put it in the church jumble sale,” her sister had said.

“That will be my motto,” Joanne agreed.

But how to enforce that with a husband who'd had so little in his childhood he was now the proverbial jackdaw? As for her younger daughter, Jean kept everything—broken crayons, almost-finished coloring books, and a toy tea set with only one cup remaining. When she and the girls had moved from their wee Council prefab to McAllister's house, she'd found under Jean's bed an ancient knitted bear that a mouse had attempted to make a nest from and was well beyond repair. After a prolonged crying fit, her daughter had agreed to keep all her old treasures in a tin trunk, not scattered on the alternative cupboard, the bedroom floor.

“This is interesting,” McAllister said. He was leafing through a leather-bound book. It was translated from German. “It's a system, graphology, and seems to be a method of deducing personality traits from handwriting.”

“Alice was experimenting with different handwriting for her illustrations.”

“Hmmm. Stuart said she was an expert in falsifying documents.”

“The book is a remnant from her colorful past, then.”

“I wonder if . . .”

“McAllister! Now you are doing what you told me not to.”

He looked up at her.

“You are speculating. Come on, admit it. You're as fascinated by Alice Ramsay as I am.”

“I am.” He stood. Taking the book to the table, he laid it on a sheet of paper. “Everything about Miss Ramsay is intriguing. But the more we know, the more dangerous it seems.”

“I listened to you. I had no intention of becoming involved.” She gestured around to the books, the paintings, the manuscript snug in the writing box. “But now that we know a little of her past, these papers are very interesting to a nosy journalist and a budding author.”

“And to Mrs. Mackenzie,” he added.

“I can't see how she is connected to Alice, apart from being chief gossipmonger.”

“Neither do the police.”

“Elaine thinks or at least wonders if Mrs. Mackenzie saw something.”

“Or someone.”

“And doesn't recognize the connection, the significance.”

“Or she does.”

“But what could Mrs. Mackenzie have seen that would make her a target? Wouldn't she have told everyone? Or at least told Calum?” Joanne dropped into the chair. “If her accident does connect with Alice, this is . . .”

“Serious.”

“Mrs. Mackenzie could still be in danger.”

“Not if it was a warning.”

“Do you think that would stop that woman?”

He had no wish to think further about Mrs. Mackenzie. “I have to go into the office. I'll finish unpacking the books tonight.”

She knew he wouldn't. He would start to read, and somehow, whilst still reading, get up, settle in the armchair, the books from the box scattered on the floor awaiting a decision—keep or donate.

After a sandwich lunch, she spread a newspaper on the sitting-room floor and, with a duster and a damp cloth handy, began unpacking the remaining volumes. She rifled through the pages, small puffs of dust falling onto the newspaper, then stacked them according to size. Arranging alphabetically or otherwise, she'd leave to McAllister.

In one box she found a book written in Latin with many pages missing. But as the book was hand-stitched, with any glue long since disintegrated, she thought little of it. As she fanned the pages of some smaller books, she could feel where pages were also missing. After a fifth book in the same condition, a thought struck her.

Too intrigued to wait until McAllister came home, she called the
Gazette
.

“He's out,” Lorna informed her.

“Is Hector in?”

“He is. But I'll have to run upstairs and make him pick up the receiver.”

“Tell him to call me back.”

Joanne smiled. When working at the
Gazette
, she'd tried to make the editorial staff function efficiently. And she'd succeeded. Mostly. Hector, however, was not a person who could be organized.

“You wanted me?” Hec sounded astonished that anyone should ask for him.

“Do you know anything about paper?” Joanne found herself reflecting Hec's abrupt speaking patterns.

“Maybe. Try me.”

“Old books. Could you date them?”

“I thought you said paper.”

“I've a collection of old books.” Telling him how she'd acquired them was a longer conversation she had no time for. “Sheets of paper are missing. It seems to be a pattern.”

“At the beginning and end of them. At chapter breaks.”

His confidence startled her. “How did you know that?”

“It's what people do when they need old paper.”

“Why?”

“Well . . . Look, I'm free for the next hour. I'll come over.”

After Hector left, Joanne was confronted with yet another puzzle.

“Elaine, I am so sorry to bother you at work. Maybe I can call back when you're free?”

“Don't worry,” Elaine said. “Dinner is finished, so most of the residents are having a nap.”

Joanne was about to say,
But it's only half past twelve
, then remembered how at old people's homes, the residents were fed early: breakfast at seven, tea at five o'clock, and in bed and lights out by eight.

“How is Mrs. Mackenzie?” Joanne asked out of good manners, not because she was interested but more because she'd heard her husband complain that once again they were without a junior reporter. When she'd offered to help out, he'd said, “Your work comes first,” and when she'd understood he was referring to her writing, her editing the manuscript, she'd been thrilled.
Yes, I am working, I am writing.

“Not much wrong with her tongue.” Elaine laughed. “And poor Calum is scared he'll lose his new job.”

“Tell him to come back. Monday, if possible.”

“I'll fib a wee bit. I'll say you said he needs to be back by then. It might be the only way to persuade him to leave.”

“Tell him
Mr.
McAllister said it, not Mrs.” Joanne knew Elaine would know why. “What I wanted to ask may seem strange. Did you ever hear of old books being sold from up your way? Maybe a private collection?”

“I'll ask around, maybe start with the auctioneer. Lots of old stuff comes up at estate sales.”

“Thanks, Elaine.”

After a minute or so of pleasantries, Joanne put down the phone. She caught her reflection in the mirror. Dust coated her hair. A smudge was on the tip of her nose.
I'm a mess—and Hector said nothing.

But he had been absorbed in the books, examining the paper, the writing, the printing style, so she shouldn't be surprised that he'd barely noticed her. Hector was on a mission to date the books, the paper and the ink and everything about them.

“Why are you so interested in these ones? They're mostly in Latin,” she'd asked as he put back another desecrated volume of religious tracts.

“Because there might be a Leonardo notebook in amongst this lot.”

“Really?” The thought thrilled and appalled her equally.

“Highly unlikely, but . . .” He went back to examining one particular volume that was older than the others, before sighing and returning it to the stack. “Forsythe had that bird drawing authenticated. Then there are your two wee sketches. If we found the book they came out of . . .”

Hector had left her with more questions than answers.

Joanne had to rush to bathe and wash and dry her hair, to be ready for the two o'clock appointment at the hospital. It was a routine checkup of the almost-healed injury she'd received five months previously.

Maybe I should mention I'm seeing shadows
. She was certain she saw movement when no one was about. The feeling of being watched was never strong enough to mention, yet frequent enough to make her uneasy. “It's only birds,” she'd mutter. “Wind whistling. Rain drumming. Cloud shadows.”

Maybe we need a dog after all,
she thought. She wondered what had happened to the wee Skye terrier she saw at Alice's. There would be plenty room for him in the new house.

On Monday, Calum came back to work at the
Gazette
. He lasted all of three days. It was Lorna who precipitated the crisis.

“Good story on the golf, Calum,” Don told him.

Calum went pink.

“Made a deadly boring game sound interesting,” Rob said.

Even though miffed at his description of golf, Calum was more thrilled by praise from Rob McLean than from the editors.

“Even though the paper's only been out a few hours, I've had phone calls objecting to Mr. McAllister's editorial,” Frankie Urquhart told them. “They're mostly for, not against, the new shops and offices.”

McAllister grinned. He liked to stir up controversy.

Frankie continued, “It's progress. High time this town caught up with the rest of the country.” He was in the destroy-and-rebuild camp. “Got to move with the times,” he told his father. Frankie was a modern young man. “Soon be 1960,” he'd say, “a new world.” The destruction of historic buildings didn't matter to him. His obsession with Elvis, with clothes and haircuts and suede winkle-picker shoes, annoyed his father and his sister, who said his feet and his hearing would be damaged forever.