A Kind of Grief (43 page)

“Can you ask if anyone knows anything at the harbor?”

“I have already, and no, no one saw nothing out of the ordinary.”

The police officer laughed. Whether at Don's convoluted grammar or that the journalist was one step ahead of him was not the point; if there had been an escape by boat, Don McLeod would have heard.

“Mrs. McAllister, thank you so much for allowing me into your home again.”

The sentiment was meant to reassure. But Hennessey's voice, dark with hidden power, made her wary. Plus, she was annoyed; she had had to bake again and vacuum the house, interfering with her newfound lust for writing.

“I have some good news. There is no objection to you keeping Miss Ramsay's versions of the Leonardo drawings.”

“So Hector was right—they are fakes.”

“Not exactly fakes,” Hennessey said. “I believe ‘executed in the style of' is the term.”

“Good enough to fool some of the experts.” Joanne smiled.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Our Alice was the best.”

He took a seat at the table, where Joanne had laid out the manuscript, divided into chapters, making eight piles of paintings and commentary. In a separate pile, she'd put out the miscellaneous notes, partial paintings, and fragments of paper with Alice's various handwriting styles. Then came a bundle of documents, official-looking—they seemed to be for reference. Finally, still in a cardboard box, were stacks of paper, cut-up notebooks, cannibalized old books, pages from parish registers.

Hennessey was an organized searcher and a fast reader, but it took close to two hours before he finished.

Joanne left him at his task and went on with her own work—making a pot of soup, preparing pastry, all the boring household chores that she chose to enjoy, using the monotony to think about her own writing.
What if the postman is a bearer of information but not in a gossipy way? A man or woman who binds a community together, not divides?
What if he too is subjected to an injustice, just as Alice was? Just as I was—and maybe still am. Perhaps the postie is a foreigner? Perhaps he writes poetry?
She wrestled with plots, with character, with how to link the ideas, and two hours vanished.

She knocked on her own sitting-room door. “Mr. Hennessey, a cup of tea?”

“Love one.” He stood, stretched, saying, “I'll join you in the kitchen, if I may?”

The scones were cooling on a wire rack. “Cheese scones, raisin scones, and over there are plain old-fashioned tattie scones.”

“My granny made tattie scones and served them with Ayrshire bacon.”

“So you are Scottish.” She laughed.

“Wheesht,” he said in a Highland accent. “That is a state secret.”

She half-believed him.

“I've finished with the manuscript. As I said, I'll need to take a few pages for examination by the experts, but only two of the pages are important to the work.”

“The bird's nest is the one I particularly want back. But what will happen with the finished manuscript, I've no idea.”

“I could contact some publishers who might be interested in the project.”

“Mr. Hennessey,” she began, and seeing those eyes, the watchful missing-nothing looking-right-at-you eyes, she hesitated.

He waited.

“If you tell me what you're looking for, I might be able to help.” In her nervousness, it came out in a rush, and she laughed a little gurgle of a laugh. “Sorry, maybe it's too important for me to know.”

“No.” He was still. Very still. It was as though the cogs were turning. Or the scales balancing. As though he was giving every consideration to why she should, or should not, know. “I can't tell you everything. Actually, I can't tell you much at all. And I promised your husband you would not be exposed to danger.”

She rolled her eyes, and he liked her the more for it.

“You have been excellent in your suggestions, so yes, you might be able to help, but purely with ideas.”

This time, he didn't see her eyes, although Joanne was equally annoyed at Hennessey treating her as though she were a clever dog.

He was leaning back in the kitchen chair in a movement similar to her husband. “I am looking for a drawing. There have been references to it in a letter. And in a conversation recalled by friends. The subject is a group of young men, four friends, at a dinner table. This drawing could supposedly reveal—”

“I don't want to know,” Joanne declared.

He sensed her fear and ignored it. “It is a small drawing, done in pencil, sketched at a dinner party. Do you have any ideas where she would hide it?”

“Perhaps it was hidden in the back of a picture and Mr. Stuart found it?”

“No. No, it wasn't.”

How can he know that?
She was longing to ask.

Hennessey continued, “If you think of something, please let me know.” He saw her nod agreement, and he was certain that finding the whereabouts of Alice's drawing by herself would be a very tempting quest for Joanne Ross.

“Thank you again,” he said. “Especially for the scones. I will be off down south tonight, so in case we don't meet again, write to me here when the manuscript is ready to show a publisher.” He handed her a simple card with a post office box number in Westminster.

When he was safely gone, and when her heartbeat had returned to near normal, Joanne leaned against the kitchen dresser and sighed. “Phew.” She had lied. She knew exactly where to look but couldn't think how to search for the drawing without alerting anyone. Then Calum saved her.

In town for grocery shopping, she first stopped by the
Gazette
office; not because she needed anything, more for the company.

McAllister told her that Dougald Forsythe now knew he'd bought an expensive fake and that the
Gazette
and the
Herald
were about to print the story. She almost felt sorry for Forsythe. “He's too ridiculous to be a real villain,” she said.

“He tried to cheat us,” McAllister reminded her.

“Aye, and he exposed Alice. But you can't blame a fox for getting in amongst the chickens.”

In the reporters' room, she listened in on a discussion between Lorna, whom she liked more and more, and Calum, whom she had less and less patience with. But still liked.

“Lorries are the best. Or commercial travelers—if you're a lad. Not always so nice if you're a girl, as they're always making passes,” Lorna was telling Calum.

“Don't blame them, you're really pretty,” he replied.

When Lorna said, “That doesn't make it acceptable,” Joanne was impressed, but could see Calum hadn't a clue what she meant.

“I'm teaching Calum to hitchhike,” Lorna explained. “Telling him the best spots to wait for a lift.”

“Clachnaharry for northbound,” Joanne said. “Out past Raigmore on the A9, before it gets too steep. If it's the Aberdeen road, I've no idea.”

Lorna laughed. “You pick up hitchhikers?”

“Always,” Joanne replied.

“I can't afford more than one trip a month home,” Calum told them, “and my mother is up to high doh, so I promised I'd come home on Saturday.”

“I get the feeling she's always up there,” Lorna said. “I used to take the calls, remember?”

“If you really need to see your mum, I'll take you up. Then you can take your chances on a lift back on Sunday.”

He jerked up; the stool he was perched on wobbled. His smile and the Labrador-puppy-grateful-for-a-bone eyes made Joanne see him as a seven year old, not twenty-two. “Really? You mean it about giving me a lift?”

“Saturday morning, eight o'clock at your digs will get us to Sutherland when?”

“Around eleven thirty, twelve, depending on the rain. And if we take the high road, it's shorter. But the A9 is easier.”

“Calum, Mrs. McAllister knows where she's going.” Lorna was not being rude; five years younger, she had more common sense than him, and he knew it.

Joanne popped in to give her husband a hug, saying, “Must run, shopping and all that.”

He hugged her back. “Me too, editorial an' aa' that.”

She felt guilty for deceiving him. But excited by her idea. Once home, she dialed.

“Sutherland Arms.”

“Mrs. Galloway, Joanne Ross here.” She explained her mission, accepted the invitation to lunch, put down the phone. Then worried how, and what, and how much she should tell her husband.

It was he who said, “I hear you're giving Calum a lift home. Want me to come too?”

“No, I'll be fine.”

He knew she was determined to go and guessed that it had something to do with Alice Ramsay. From guilt, from curiosity, she would go north, with or without him. The consequences could be nothing. Or could awaken yet another visit from the shadows.

She didn't see the concern on his face as he turned away. But she sensed it and knew she was being stubborn. “You're right. I could do with a second driver.”

“How can I resist such a charming invitation?”

They dropped the girls off at their grandparents', picked up Calum, and once more set off up the A9 northwards. Joanne never tired of the Highland roads, never tired of the spectacle of the firths and rivers and mountains and sea lochs and forests and moors of her native land.

At the turnoff at Alness, she stared at a deep winter-blue sky and hoped the cold, clear day was set to last. They were on the high ridge road—shorter in miles but longer in time—to Bonar Bridge, the crossing point over the Dornoch Firth to the county of Sutherland, when she became aware of an uneasiness in her stomach. She drew into a lay-by at the top of the pass, with the view to the mountains of Sutherland ahead and below the long, wide mudflats of the firth that divided the counties.

“I need to stretch my legs,” she explained. As they stood staring at the view, she felt hot in the cold air.
What are we doing? Why can't I leave well alone? Why am I so obsessed with Alice Ramsay?

“Bonnie, isn't it?”

She jumped. She'd forgotten Calum was with them, as no one had spoken much on the journey.

“It is,” she agreed.

McAllister reached for a cigarette. Then put the packet of Passing Clouds back. Joanne wanted him to cut down on his smoking, and the air felt like pure oxygen. I'm behaving like a married man, he thought, and didn't mind.

At the hotel, Calum thanked them for the lift.

“Time for a beer?” McAllister asked him.

“Best not,” the young man replied.

“Don't tease him,” Joanne said as she watched Calum, shoulders slumped, walk across the square towards home.

“I think I'll take a walk to the golf links. See you back here in an hour.”

“Aye,” she said. “The bar there will be open by now.” And, grinning, she waved him off to the clubhouse, where he could view the links and think his ungentlemanly thoughts about golf, “the ruination of a good walk” one of his more polite descriptions of the ancient game.