The Murder Hole (19 page)

Kirsty was staring, the needles stationary in
her hands, her expression compounded of confusion and caution.

Yes, it was a rare mind that appreciated
free-association. Jean glanced again at the photo, where Eileen
looked as though she was a bit out of her depth and resentful of
finding herself there. Jean couldn’t help Eileen, but she could
take pity on Kirsty and cut to the chase already. “If you need help
with anything else, just ask. With the explosion and the police
taking Iris away, your schedule’s really been disrupted.”

“What I’m needing is Aunt Iris back.” Taking
a deep breath, Kirsty set her chin and sat up straighter. “You say
you’re chums with this Cameron chap. Can you tell me, then, why
they took Aunt Iris away? What was she telling them, that they’d
suspect her of blowing up boats?”

It was Jean’s turn to stare, jaw slack,
possible responses doing a Keystone Kops routine in her mind. Would
she be exceeding her brief if she told Kirsty about Iris’s
confession?
No
. “Iris was seen puttering about the bay
Thursday evening, during Roger’s ITN interview.”

“She’s after doing that every few days,
checking her flatworm traps. Keeps a power boat at the pier.”

“That’s as may be,” Jean began, and realized
she sounded like Alasdair. “Maybe so, but she also confessed to
sending the anonymous letters to Roger Dempsey. I know she doesn’t
care for him, but does threatening him seem any more likely to you
than it does to me?”

“She confessed to . . ?” A flush started in
Kirsty’s cheeks and bloomed outward. With deliberate if jerky
movements she finished the row of stitches and dropped her knitting
into her lap, so that the scarf and the ball of yarn made a puddle
the same color as her face. Then the sudden flow of crimson ebbed
so completely from her complexion that even in the lamplight she
seemed ghostly pale and cold. A strand of hair dangled beside her
face, limp as seaweed.

Once again, Jean thought of drowned Ophelia,
a pawn in the designs of others. More steps clumped slowly, almost
stealthily, across the ceiling, accompanied by the sound of
trickling water. Mandrake stretched and began to groom his already
sleek fur. Finally Jean asked gently, “Kirsty, what’s going on
here? Do you think Iris sent the letters?”

“No, she couldna have done, it’s not like
her. But I dinna know, do I? She’s come over all strange since the
Water Horse folk arrived. She’s always been one to get on with what
needs doing, but now, no, she’s sitting up the tower instead of
washing dishes and the like.”

“What’s at the top of the tower?”

“A room. All dust and cobwebs. Iris locks it
up, disna allow the guests there, but then, there’s nothing there
worth doing.”

“Except looking out at the loch?” Jean
hazarded. “And, the last few days, at the Water Horse boat?”

This time it was Kirsty’s gaze that strayed
to the framed photo and then back to Jean’s face, where it clung.
Any port in a storm, it seemed. “She used to tell you straight out
what she’s thinking, but not now, no, she’s after keeping something
back”

“She’s pretty straightforward about her
feelings for Roger. And she didn’t mince words about not wanting
you to see Brendan any more. Sorry,” Jean added to the flash in
Kirsty’s eyes, “I was on the terrace this morning and overheard you
talking to her.”

“So did half the town, I’m thinking. Oh aye,
she’s dead set against Brendan, for no more reason than that he’s
working with Roger, so far as I can tell. As for why she’s taken
against Roger, that’s a question she’ll not be answering.”

“The answer lies in the past,” Jean said half
to herself, and, louder, “As for the present, I heard you
identified a corkscrew the police found in the wreckage of the
boat. It must have been taken from here recently—there wasn’t one
on the drinks table last night.”

“Iris forgot it when she made up the table,
did she? Like I was saying, she’s not herself.” Kirsty shook her
head. “The corkscrew the polis showed me, now, that was never on
the drinks table. It went missing from the desk here a couple of
months ago.”

That was interesting. “Do you think someone’s
trying to frame Iris for blowing up the Water Horse boat, not to
mention for writing those letters?”

“So it seems.” Kirsty turned the knitting
over and over in her lap, inspecting it carefully but not actually
making any stitches. The twin spikes of the needles chimed
together.

Funny, Jean thought, every time the subject
of the letters came up, Kirsty ducked and covered. That might be
something worth exploring, but then, there was a lot else to
explore, too. “What about Brendan? You went to the Tourist
Authority dinner with him last night. You were with him when the
boat exploded.”

“Oh aye, that I was.”

“I know how Iris felt about your going with
him. But how did Roger and Tracy feel?”

“The trout, Tracy, asked right sharpish where
Jonathan was, why Brendan was there instead. She never took any
notice of me. Roger now, he seemed right pleased to see me. Thought
he was putting one over on Iris, most likely.”

Jean’s ears pricked again. “So Jonathan was
supposed to be at the dinner.”

“He was that, aye. Tracy, she wanted the
Brits front and center for the Brit press, didn’t she? But Jonathan
told Brendan he couldn’t be bothered with a posh dinner. Brendan
swapped with him so as to take me out.” Some of the color seeped
back into Kirsty’s face at that.

“Was Brendan supposed to have stayed on the
boat?”

“No, he’d been told to drive to Inverness.
The post needed collecting.”

“But Jonathan wasn’t driving to Inverness, he
was on the boat. Why?”

“If he’d told anyone you’d not be asking me,
would you?” Kirsty returned, cutting Jean no slack for a rhetorical
question. “Brendan, now, he reckons Jonathan was a spy. Industrial
espionage. He sneaked onto the boat to take photos of the
submersible he might could sell to another company.”

Jean sat up straight, wondering if she was
hearing more tumblers falling into place or simply the clatter of
scattershots, taken at random. “Photos of one of the ROVs, you
mean?”

“Brendan said submersible. Close to being the
same thing, isn’t it?”

“Close, yes. Why does he think Jonathan was a
spy?”

“He was asking too many questions and prying
about in areas that weren’t his affair.”

“If asking questions and prying is enough to
make someone suspicious of you, then I should have been carried off
by the police long ago!”

A dry, almost sarcastic laugh escaped
Kirsty’s lips. “But you’re a reporter, and you’re working with the
polis, aren’t you now? Jonathan wasn’t a reporter, he was a
computer . . .”

A sudden thudding sound cut Kirsty off in
mid-sentence and made both women sit back abruptly, like
conspirators interrupted at their plotting.

The sound, Jean realized, was coming from the
business end of the dragon knocker. The front door opened and a
male voice called, “Miss Wotherspoon?”

“In here!” Kirsty returned, and shrank down
in her chair, her face curdling into a scowl. “That Sawyer chap, he
said he’d be sending a forensics team.”

Jean clenched her jaw.
Good timing
. In
another few minutes Kirsty might have shared a confidence or two.
Typical Sawyer, a Scottish bull in a pottery shop.

The thunder of footsteps in the hall sounded
like the running of the bulls at Pamplona. Jean hauled herself to
her feet. “Well, you can always hope they have D.C. Gunn with
them.”

“Who?” Kirsty asked,

“D.C. Gunn. The cute young guy about your
age.”

Kirsty looked blank. If he’d been flirting
with her, she hadn’t noticed.

A constable peered through the doorway. “Miss
Wotherspoon?”

“Hang in there,” Jean told Kirsty, and
received an impatient but not actively hostile snort in
acknowledgment.

Jean pushed her way through the front hall
and away, telling herself,
If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got
it mad
e. But she wasn’t faking her wish to reassure Kirsty. Or
her need to know. It was only after she had spurted out into a
fine, misty rain and was halfway across the courtyard that she
registered neither Gunn nor Sawyer in the official group milling
around the front hall. That made her feel a bit better about
abandoning Kirsty, not that she wouldn’t have been requested to
remove herself from the area anyway. And if Kirsty didn’t know how
to take care of herself, she needed to learn that particular life
lesson ASAP.

The Lodge was so silent Jean could hear the
ticking of the kitchen clock. She skimmed up the stairs, and with
another glare at the locked room—no, she hadn’t suddenly developed
x-ray vision—she grabbed her notebook and folding umbrella. Back
outside, Jean keyed Michael and Rebecca’s number into her phone. A
series of chirps and clicks hinted the call was being forwarded,
and Michael’s voice said, “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Jean. Sorry to bug you again, but
the questions are coming faster and faster.”

“No problem, though you’ll have to be going
on with one set of answers. I came away to the Museum to work so’s
Rebecca could have a good rest.”

“Well, it’s a Museum question. Is there any
evidence Ambrose found that hoard in the Pictish cemetery up the
hill from Pitclachie?”

“Like excavating King Tut’s tomb? Not likely.
The Picts didna believe in grave goods. And Ambrose only excavated
the one grave.”

“So he said.”

“Oh aye. He might could have turned over the
entire hillside and no one’s the wiser. Come to that . . .” His
pause was as pregnant as his wife. “The silver chain we were
talking about earlier the day, the one offered the Museum last
year. It came from the Great Glen all right, but not from Iris. She
sold one to the Museum twenty years since, though.”

“When she started fixing up the house.” Maybe
the marks on the velvet backing from that one had faded. Maybe it
had never been in the cabinet. Fantasizing about treasure chests in
Pitclachie’s dungeons, Jean said, “She’s sold some old books too, I
bet, but she’s still got three from Mandrake Press, including
Aleister Crowley’s
Moonchild
. You think they might be
valuable?”

“Most likely, aye, depending on whether
you’re after collecting or burning them.” Computer keys clicked.
“Oh aye. Mandrake was started up by two of Crowley’s admirers in
nineteen-twenty-nine. Almost failed the next year, but was
re-organized by a consortium led by Crowley himself—and here you
are, Ambrose Mackintosh had a financial interest. They published a
small load of obscure and controversial items, but went bankrupt
after eighteen months.”

“Ambrose invested in a publisher? He’d have
gotten a better return betting on horse races. Thanks, Michael.
I’ll check with you on Monday about Ambrose’s stone mason. And see
what else you can find about that silver chain from last year while
you’re at it, please.”

“My powers are limited, but I’ll do my best.
Take care, now.”

“That’s the idea. Cheers.” Thrusting her
phone into her purse, Jean contemplated the plants and trees
alongside the terrace, wondering where the summerhouse had once
stood. Leaves rustled and flowers bobbed up and down in the wind.
Or against the wind, actually. A faint prickle oozed through her
body, raising gooseflesh, and then passed on. The mysterious ghost
in the garden or just the breeze, not so much the physical one as
the chilly breath of the past.

A shape in a nearby window became Mandrake
the cat, his sleek body distorted by the old glass, his eyes hard
and steady, focused on the same patch of greenery that had
attracted Jean’s extra-sensory attention. His tail curled back and
forth, making question marks. Jean had heard that animals could
sense ghosts. Probably, like people, some did and some didn’t. But
if Pitclachie’s pet had been immune to the paranormal, she’d have
been disappointed.

Frowning up at the tower—there was another
mysterious if not necessarily locked room—Jean walked around the
corner of the house.

In the parking area, Roger was clambering
into the driver’s seat of the Water Horse van while Brendan slammed
the back door. Their jeans were muddy and their hair slicked down,
wet with rain. Back to headquarters to crunch the data, Jean
supposed. She waved as Brendan vaulted into the van, but Roger had
already started the engine and neither somber face turned toward
her as they drove away.

A short sharp shower of rain made her hoist
her umbrella. She contracted herself into its meager shelter,
seeing not the gray waves of rain rumpling the water of the loch
but Jonathan Paisley’s floating body, hearing not the spatter of
the raindrops but Kirsty’s voice:
Jonathan wasn’t a reporter, he
was a computer
. . . Nerd or geek, Jean finished for her.

But what if he
had
been a reporter of
some sort? Computer and journalistic skills weren’t mutually
exclusive. And if he had been a reporter, maybe he’d been after a
story Roger didn’t want revealed, the secret agenda Jean had
already suspected.

She was just starting off down the
driveway—wet shoes wouldn’t kill her—when the Bouchards hurried
around the corner of the house, sheltering beneath a big black
umbrella that was hardly fashionably Parisian but was much more
practical.

“You go to town?” asked Sophie.

Charles unlocked the doors of their pale gold
Renault. “Here. Come to ride with us. Not so wet.”

“Why thank you!” Jean flattened her umbrella
and tumbled awkwardly into the back seat.

Sophie glided swan-like into the front seat
and adjusted her scarf around her shoulders. “The gendarmes, they
tell us to go. They will search our room, they say. Very
unpleasant.”