Night of the Highland Dragon (16 page)

Almost as fast as Judith had moved in the clearing, Mrs. Simon was out of her chair and across the room, wrapping her daughter in her arms. Claire pressed her face against her mother's shoulder and started to cry. Between her sobs and the position, William couldn't hear much of what she said, but whatever it was made Mrs. Simon start, her own eyes widening and her mouth going thin. A look at Judith showed a similar expression on her face, but with less shock and more suspicion in it.

When the broken word “bodies” reached William's ears, he understood why.

Mrs. Simon pulled back, though she kept her hands on Claire's shoulders. “Calm yourself a moment, quine,” she said. The word was obviously an endearment, though one William had never heard before. “You'll need to tell her ladyship. 'Tis the sort of thing she ought to be knowing.”

As if Claire were ten years younger, Mrs. Simon took out a handkerchief and wiped her face. As if Claire were ten years younger, she submitted without protest, though she did blow her own nose. William looked away and kept silent. The girl would look back on this with enough mortification as it was. Just now, she didn't seem to know he was in the room. She only looked at Judith when her mother spoke, and that in a sort of daze.

“I—” she began, her voice choked with tears. She cleared her throat, snuffled, and started over. “Mairi and I were going down to her house. And we cut through the graveyard. We—we'd done it before. Everyone does. It's shorter that way, and there arena' so many brambles, and a few folks walking about isna' like to disturb the”—she gulped—“dead.”

“I shouldn't think it would, no,” said Judith. “Nobody'll be angry with you, Claire. Just go on.”

Claire nodded. “We saw the earth had been tossed up. And we thought that was odd, since nobody's died. We thought perhaps an animal'd been at the place. So we went over to see—I thought maybe we could tell the minister how bad it was—and it was
awful
. And not an animal at all. They—somebody—somebody dug up the graves. Two of them, and they broke the coffins open, and we could see the bodies. And one of them, it was like he was staring at us, but he didna' have any eyes—”

The last word came out as a wail, and Claire buried herself in her mother's arms again.

William's first feeling was relief. Whatever might have happened to expose them, the bodies were still in the churchyard and not, for instance, up and walking around. Claire's mention of disturbing the dead had steeled him for the worst. Desecration wasn't that, but it was bad and had the potential for worse.

Almost reflexively, he turned to look at Judith. She met his eyes, her face grim, and nodded. “I'll go and have a word with the reverend.”

“He”—Claire sniffled—“knows. He came out when we screamed, and
he
screamed, and then he fell down and we ran for the doctor and he's still alive but—”

“Evans is in his seventies,” Judith said to William. “A good man, but—spirit, flesh, so on. You did well, Claire. I'll see to it that this is set right.” Her voice itself was a pledge. As quickly as she'd turned to Claire, she looked back at William. “Mr. Arundell, may I impose on you? It's not a scene I wish to walk into alone.”

“Of course,” said William. Even in the midst of his alarm, he heard the real offer of cooperation underneath her words and the trust there, and rejoiced in it. After all, Judith MacAlasdair, who'd spent more years in armies than he'd spent walking the earth, would hardly be in need of male support to go and look at a body or two. “I'll go get my things and be down directly.”

Once they'd left the house behind, Judith glanced at the bag William had retrieved. “More preparation?”

“One never knows.”

“In this case, one knows a little too well,” said Judith. “Or at least suspects.”

William had gone to services on the occasional Sunday, keeping up an image of respectability for Loch Arach that he'd never bothered about in larger cities. He'd spoken with Evans only briefly. The old man did not appear to concern himself much with things of this world, and what he'd been able or willing to say about either the village or the MacAlasdairs had been vague and not helpful. He'd been gentle and amiable to all appearances, and when William saw Dr. McKendry coming out of the parsonage, he hurried forward with almost as much interest as Judith herself did.

“He'll be all right,” said the doctor, not waiting on Judith's question. Her face was expressive enough when she wanted it to be. “Only a shock—but that's no joke for a man of his age. I've told him to rest for a few days. You'll have heard what brought it on?”

“I heard,” said Judith. “Have you seen it?”

“No. Neither do I want to, unless you feel I'll do any good. The graves disturbed were older, I hear, and I dinna' think medicine's of much help there any longer—but if your ladyship desires—”

Judith shook her head, one quick motion like the stroke of a knife. “No. Take care of Reverend Evans. Tell him I'll handle matters. Tell anyone else who asks too. I don't guess there's much chance of keeping this quiet, is there?”

“Not hardly,” said Dr. McKendry.

“Aye, so I'd thought.” Judith sighed. “Mr. Arundell will be helping me have a look. They're doing wonderful things with investigation in London now, I hear. If you have a moment, send a few strong lads with shovels round in about an hour. We should be done then.”

“I'll pass the word. Good day, Lady MacAlasdair. Mr. Arundell.”

“Good day,” said William. Judith was already striding toward the graveyard.

The older part was right up near the church, but the graves in question were a little distance away from that, set apart from the clumps of families. Before he could see the headstones, he spotted the graves themselves, dirt piled up in rich brown hills. He heard Judith hiss breath in through her teeth.

“Anyone you know?” William asked quietly.

“I'm not sure yet. But—if I had known them, it didn't end well.” She closed her eyes for a second, as if that would aid her memory. “It's harder to tell now, with the graves more crowded together and so many of them worn down. But I'm fairly certain those men were hanged.”

“Oh, hell,” said William. She was probably right. When they drew close enough to see the gravestones, he noticed that they were plain things, with only the dates of birth and death on them and no words of comfort for anyone—not absolute proof that they'd died as criminals, but further evidence.

Both coffins were open—smashed with a heavy implement, likely a shovel. Only a skull stared out from one of them, while thick wood hid the rest of the body. The other corpse was, well, fresher—buried more recently and in a sturdier coffin. The man still had a face left, ravaged though it was. The grave robber had been more thorough in this case. The whole top of the coffin was gone. The body lay plain in William's view. William looked down the length of the probably-not-a-gentleman and found what he'd been dreading.

“The left hand is gone,” he said. Only the two of them stood in the graveyard, but he spoke quietly anyhow. The spirit of the place demanded it. “Do you know if he went to the grave that way?”

“Let me think.” She read the name and dates on the gravestone over, tapping her index finger against her lips. “Sixty-eight. I was here—I recall the trial. Murder, it was, and a shocking case. His own wife and daughters.” Judith spoke slowly and without emotion, a woman describing a dream. “We sent to the Queen for permission. Have to, these days. Ryan. Aye. Brute of a fellow. And we buried him with both hands. Which means someone took one. Why?”

“I couldn't say for sure,” said William, “but I've heard a legend or five. Things you can do with a dead man's hands—walk through walls and the like. Criminals' hands in particular. I wish I knew more theory.”

“So do I,” said Judith. “Colin would be helpful about now. Never tell him I said that,” she added with a faint smile. “So—a necromancer. Wonderful news.”

“You already knew he summoned demons.”

“Aye, well, I'm not saying I'm
shocked
.” Judith stepped back and looked at the graves, hands on hips and lips pressed tightly together. “When I get my hands on the bastard—but then, we'll need to know which bastard it is.”

“A new one,” said William, looking down at the muddy ground.

“What, we've got
two
?”

“No. Someone new in town—or at least someone who does more indoor work than most.” He gestured. “See, there are footprints here. All around the graves, I'd wager, though you and I and the girls might have disturbed some of them. Man-sized, though not a man with very large feet or a vast stride. More importantly, they're from shoes, not boots.”

“Evans wears shoes,” said Judith. “But if he'd been digging up graves last night, he'd be in one now.”

“And I don't get the impression, from what either Claire or Dr. McKendry said, that he came this close to the graves themselves. We can check, but—no, he's not a likely suspect. That leaves McKendry, though he's hardly young himself, his friend Hamilton, and me.” William smiled. “And I'm touched that you didn't think of me immediately when Claire came in.”

“I saw your face,” said Judith with a shrug. “'Twould be a hell of an actor who could look so surprised—and so displeased. And if you'd done this, you'd not have been nearly so messy about it or have pointed out the footprints. Besides”—she gestured to Ryan—“it rained on him, and rained hard. When it was raining last night, I was with you.”

“And here I was thinking that you trusted me blindly.”

Judith turned to him, her smile friendly and predatory at once. “Never blindly. Not anyone. Not even myself. But aye, I trust you.”

It was the wrong time and place to reach for her. It would have either been irreverent or patronizing. William kept his hands at his sides and simply looked, meeting her eyes for a long minute, before turning reluctantly back to business.

“Whoever it was,” he said, “he must have had to leave in a hurry. Otherwise he
wouldn't
have left things in such a state. There might have been a witness—or the nearest thing to one.”

“Not Evans, or he wouldn't have been so shocked. At that, if anyone had seen, word would have gotten around long before Claire and Mairi stumbled in here.”

“Unless they didn't see. Our grave robber might have been easy to scare off. If you'll keep watch,” William said, thanking his better angels that he'd thought he might be going out again and had therefore brought his bag, “I can try to find out more.”

Judith nodded. “Shout when you're done,” she said and turned toward the gates of the graveyard. “There's nobody who'll see you from outside, and nobody who'll get past my watch.”

She headed away from him, her feet making soft noises on the damp earth. William watched as her figure grew smaller. Then he put down his bag, bent, and retrieved the silver chains. He focused his mind as he'd been taught, and before long was barely even aware of Judith's presence.

Barely. There was a feeling of safety that he hadn't experienced before. Maybe it was just because he had a lookout this time, or the sanction of a woman who was as close to the authorities as anyone in Loch Arach was going to be.

William doubted it.

The autumn wind did an amazingly good job of cutting through two layers of wool and three of cotton. Judith wrapped her arms around her chest and shifted her weight, hoping that William's bit of magic wouldn't take very long—and that it would be useful. In front of her, the road stayed empty; nearby, the stone frames of the church and the parsonage were small and gray against the mountains' darkness. The smell of wet earth was strong, though not as strong as it had been by the graves themselves, and now she couldn't even smell a trace of flesh. It had been faint to begin with. The bodies had been old.

So far she'd not had to turn anyone away from the graveyard. Word would naturally have gotten around by now, but respect would keep most people away, particularly with news of the vicar's sudden illness.

Poor Evans. She should have sent for an assistant—and eventual replacement—long before, Judith thought. When she'd first come back, that duty wouldn't have slipped her mind, but until Claire had mentioned his collapse, she hadn't thought of his real age. She still remembered him taking up the post: an endearingly homely man, a little past sixty, with curly blondish-gray hair, a full beard, and a plump middle-aged wife. He'd come back around the same time she had. Judith didn't remember him as a boy—her visits then had been brief—but she knew he'd been born in Loch Arach, kin to one of the Welshmen who'd been her mother's people, and then left to attend a university.

That was how it worked now. When she'd been a girl, most people had died without going more than twenty miles from the place they were born. Strictly going by the numbers, she supposed that most of them still did—but it didn't feel that way. Prosperous men sent their sons away to school. Some even sent their daughters these days. Youths with less money took matters into their own hands. They did as she'd done, despite her wealth, and joined the Queen's service, or simply ran away and found a trade out in the wider world. The railroads made it easier. The papers made it alluring.

A few came back for good. She had. Evans had. More stayed gone, and if they returned at all, it was only on a fleeting visit. Take Ross MacDougal—a name and a source of infrequent letters for ten years, and then back with his family, as much a stranger as kin now. He'd be leaving soon, no doubt. Winter in the mountains was no easy stretch, and he'd never acted like a man who'd come to stay. Running from a disappointment wouldn't make a man linger past snowfall, and neither would the desire to show off his fancy new clothes.

She caught her breath, the air cold in her throat.

Fancy
new
clothes
, she mused, and thought of London and of dates. A shape began to emerge out of them: not yet anything clear, but a patch that might be fog or might be a coastline. Judith stood and thought some more. When she heard footsteps coming up behind her, she whirled, expecting William, eager to speak and to listen.

She made herself wait. Theories should always wait on facts. “Anything?”

“Not much.” William sighed. “Though it's as we were thinking. A light went on in the window over at the vicarage, and our man grabbed tools and ran. And it was a man, or at least man-shaped. That's all. Without recent death, there isn't as much of an echo to pick up. That isn't to say I'm longing for murder, of course.”

“No,” said Judith, not paying much attention. He hadn't found any new information; therefore, it was time to put together what they did have. “I'd forgotten about someone,” she said. “When we were talking earlier.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “Ross MacDougal. He's a local lad by birth, but he went down to London about ten years back. Did well for himself, by the way he dresses, and—” She stopped, because William was staring at her, mouth slightly open. “You've heard of him?”

“Respectable-looking chap? About so high”—he sketched with a hand—“with light hair?” When Judith nodded, he said, “We met. Twice. The first time was in the store, before it burnt down. Nothing more than small talk there, but I thought he looked distracted. And I thought that I'd seen him before. Back in England.”

“Would that mean anything, if you did?”

“It might. Not that I've any single nemesis plotting my downfall,” he added with a quick smile that immediately subsided back into his look of serious thought, “but the men we…handle…run in packs. Cults, mostly. Secret brotherhoods. I wonder sometimes—but that's not relevant. He and I might have encountered each other before under less pleasant circumstances.”

“Or at a gentleman's club,” said Judith, playing the contrarian now.

“Or that. Or shared a compartment on a train. So—nothing to hang a man on. Not yet. But the second time—” He paused, and she saw his shoulders stiffen beneath his coat. He took her hands between both of his and looked soberly into her eyes. “The second time he was going to see you.”

“Was he?” she asked, not alarmed but beginning to be wary. The shape in the distance was beginning to look more like land—and a rocky coastline at that. “When?”

“The night I…walked in on you. In the forest. I met him on my way back. His mother had asked him to bring a basket up to the castle, he said, and he said too that he'd gotten delayed. He never saw you, I take it.”

“No, but he wouldn't have. He knows the cook well. He'd have left it with her, if I wasn't there, and I'd imagine it might have slipped her mind. I could believe his mother sending things up to the kitchen. She used to be my housekeeper. Poor Elspeth,” said Judith. “If we're right—damn. She's that proud of her boy these days.”

“‘A policeman's lot is not a happy one,'” William quoted, but he was mocking neither her nor the situation, she was sure of it. The only humor in his voice was very dark indeed. “He didn't seem at all glad to see me. But he could have just been out of sorts. It wasn't a very pleasant walk, I'd think, particularly for a man used to hansom cabs and the Underground.”

“You would know,” said Judith absently, still thinking of Elspeth—and Gillian too. It'd be a hard blow for the whole family, were Ross the guilty party. No harder than Hamilton's guilt would be for McKendry, maybe. She scowled down at the rock wall of the graveyard.

“Not as much as you might think. Most of my work hasn't been in cities. But”—William squeezed Judith's hands lightly, drawing her out of her thoughts—“we have no proof of anything yet. Nothing odd happened to you after his visit, did it?”

Judith shook her head, then laughed, short and sharp. “Nothing I didn't bring on myself,” she said, looking up at William until a twist of his lips showed that he'd taken her meaning. “So—it's down to those two. Hamilton's a medical man. And one who experiments. He'd
mentioned
blood, for which the dead couldn't be much good, but his research could have led him in other directions. He wouldn't be the first surgeon in want of a corpse or two.”

“What good would demons do him?”

“What good would they do Ross? Or anyone?” She rubbed her forehead, trying to think. “They were following me. Spying on me. Both men would have heard stories enough about us—Ross when he was young, and Hamilton once he came here. I suppose Hamilton could have been curious. Scientific-minded and all. Ross isn't.”

“Wasn't,” said William. “Ten years can change a man.”

“Aye. And he could have other reasons. Blackmail, mayhap. Or sorcery. We have”—she hesitated and then settled on a vague enough response—“a few enchantments running, and we are what we are. If he's learned magic, he could want more power of that kind. There's no way of knowing.”

Either of her brothers would have done better, she thought. Colin knew magic and all the games of society, and Stephen lived in London, dealing daily in power and intrigue. She'd been a soldier and a sailor. She was a landlord—landlady—now. The water was up to her neck, and she could barely find the bottom with her toes.

But this was her village and her duty.

“The thing to do, I suppose,” she said, “is to see where Hamilton and Ross were last night. Though if we start asking after either of them, whichever one it really is will get wise quickly.”

“Right,” said William. “And we don't have much time regardless.” He looked back over his shoulder toward the opened graves. “I don't know precisely what our man's planning—spells themselves aren't my forte—but I do know that anything involving a criminal's body is likely to be very drastic and very bad.”

“Worse than demons?”

“Could be,” said William. “We'll split up, if you're amenable. Each ask about one suspect. That way, we stand a chance of finding out what we need before word gets back to the culprit himself.”

When he'd asked her to keep watch, Judith hadn't thought anything of the request, too concerned with the desecration and the magic being worked behind her to think of emotional matters. Now, while she considered logistics, a small thought slipped in behind the more practical workings of her mind:
He
trusts
me
.

She had no leisure to be glad, or to worry that she was. “I'll talk to the MacDougals,” Judith said. “They know me. You take McKendry. We'll meet at the church at noon, aye?”

“Aye,” said William, and then he smiled. “That is, yes.”

“Don't worry,” said Judith. Figures were coming down the road now: the requested brawny lads with shovels. “It takes a few years more to go native.”

She headed off, first to meet the approaching crew and then to have what she didn't doubt would be a series of increasingly unpleasant conversations. Behind her, though, she knew that William smiled, and matters seemed a shade less bleak.