The Murder Hole (30 page)

Across from her bedroom, the door to the
storeroom was now shut.
Fine. Be that way
. Quickly Jean
washed and threw on jeans and a sweater, gathered up her things,
and headed downstairs. She felt headachy and nauseated, but if that
indicated a hangover, it wasn’t from the one glass of whiskey. She
was hungry, that was all. Hunger had to be a good sign.

The velvet curtain was pulled across the
vestibule. Behind it the tiles were littered with squashed yellow
broom petals, tracked in the night before. She went outside, locked
the door, and reached for the old book she’d left on a stone gewgaw
last night. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere, neither on the
pavement nor in the shrubbery, knocked aside by some distracted
police person. She could ask the constable now standing by the base
of the tower, but decided she didn’t care.

Averting her eyes from the water horse logo
carved into the dew-dampened stone flags, Jean went into the main
house and followed her nose—coffee, toast, bacon!—past the library
and down the hall into the dining room. Its arched windows and
French doors echoed the neo-gothic extravagance of the rest of the
house, but its furnishings were less fussy. Four small tables in
assorted styles, less antique than simply pre-owned, were scattered
across the polished planks of the floor. A sideboard displayed not
the family silver but assorted cereal boxes, fruit bowls, and
pitchers. The drinks cart sat to one side, its array of bottles
looking sad and neglected. And still lacking a corkscrew, Jean
assumed. Had Martin palmed it, so he could loudly announce its
absence?

The other two Halls, Noreen and Elvis, were
sitting by the window. She was staring into her teacup—foretelling
a meeting with a handsome stranger, perhaps—while the child ate a
soft-boiled egg with strips of toast, utterly focused.
Multi-tasking came along with adulthood and the worries thereof.
Jean seated herself at one of the two tables still set.

Kirsty pushed her way through the swinging
door from the kitchen, a pot of coffee in one hand, a pot of tea in
the other. Her face was almost as ashen as it had been the night
before, and yet, on her, pallor was attractive, romantic as a
drooping rose. Jean’s own face in the mirror had resembled an
albino cactus. She held out her cup. “Coffee, please.”

Kirsty filled the cup expertly, without
spilling a drop. “Help yourself to juice and the like. I’ve got
bacon, eggs, and tomato on the cooker.”

“Thank you.” Jean poured milk in her coffee
and took a healthy swig.
Oh my. Oh yes
. She swallowed again,
then headed for the sideboard.

“We only booked the room ‘til today,” Noreen
said to Kirsty, as though resuming a conversation interrupted by a
kitchen timer. “If the police want us to stay on, then they can pay
the tariff.”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Kirsty
replied. “Is Mr. Hall coming down for breakfast?”

“Don’t know. Couldn’t be bothered to say.”
Even Noreen’s scowl seemed anemic. “This isn’t a safe place for the
child, is it now? He’s never a suspect. But no, that prat Cameron,
he’s saying we’re obliged to stay on.”

Alasdair was no prat, Jean harrumphed
silently. Keeping your suspects corralled was standard procedure,
child or no child. And she wasn’t surprised he was already out and
about, delivering directives and no doubt asking questions.

“Me, I’m obliged to ring the folk with rooms
booked the night and cancel,” Kirsty muttered darkly as she hurried
back to the kitchen. “Iris won’t be half . . .”

Upset
, Jean finished, and starting
spooning bran flakes and fruit salad into her mouth.

“Mummy,” said Elvis. His ensuing soliloquy
was muffled by Noreen’s wiping his face with a napkin. She grasped
his hand and pulled him out of the dining room, acknowledging
Jean’s presence by turning up one side of her upper lip. Elvis’s
voice disappeared down the hall and up the stairs. “Nessies climb
out of the water, don’t they? Daddy says they climb out of the
water. And he says the arky—arkylogies—will find their bones buried
like treasure.”

Jean chewed. So that’s what Daddy—er,
Martin—was saying about Roger’s archaeological plans, was it? Bones
like treasure. Or maybe bones and treasure. Is that what Martin and
Tracy had talked about during the boat tour, leaving Noreen to
chase after Elvis? It had probably been Martin in Tracy’s hotel
room, after all, plotting . . . Well, plotting something. He’d
looked horrified last night, but then, they’d all looked horrified
last night.

Kirsty reappeared, holding a plate of runny
eggs, charred bacon, and a tomato half, a dishtowel serving as hot
pad. She set the plate and a rack of toast on the table. “Sorry,
we’ve got no sausage or beans. Most times Aunt Iris is off to the
shops of a Saturday, but she’s . . . Well, you know where she was.
Your pal Cameron, he’s saying she’ll be back home the day.”

“Good,” said Jean, and swallowed the “your
pal Cameron” with a bit too audible a gulp.

Kirsty clattered the Halls’ dirty dishes into
a stack and started for the kitchen.

“Did you hear anything last night?” Jean
asked. “Before Tracy—you know.”

“I heard people walking about. I’m always
hearing people walking about. Then she screamed.”

“Do you ever hear ghosts walking about?”

Kirsty stopped in the doorway, bracing the
door open with her elbow. Her face was hidden but her voice was
sharp as a paring knife. “Ghosts? Why are you wanting to know
that?”

“I like ghost stories. A lot of these old
places have gray ladies and blood spots, that sort of thing. It’s
not all that unusual for people to sense, well, presences.” When
Kirsty didn’t reply, Jean said, “Did you hear a metallic crash
about twenty minutes ago?”

“I was cooking toast for the Americans then.
They wanted coffee and toast is all. Hard to credit, them not
wanting the full breakfast, but that’s all they ate yesterday
morning as well.”

“Maybe they were upset about Tracy. And
yesterday about the boat explosion.”

“They were that, aye, pulling long faces and
talking about what a tragedy it was and all, and how things happen
that you don’t intend.”

Amen to that
. “So you didn’t hear a
crash?”

“Brendan’s saying they’ll be digging the day.
You heard him and Roger. Dr. Dempsey. Digging for monster bones
when his wife’s been murdered.” Kirsty vanished through the
swinging door, leaving it to creak to and fro a couple of times and
then quiet. Her Glasgow accent gave each sentence a sarcastic tail,
but Jean bet the sarcasm ran deeper than her voice.

In lonely splendor—a state that was less
compelling now than it had been several months ago—Jean finished
her cereal, ate her eggs, and considered the different skeins of
evidence. Ambrose and Eileen. Roger and Tracy. Aleister Crowley,
the Picts, Nessie. Iris.

Then she stacked up her dishes and started
toward the kitchen, planning to offer her assistance . . . Who was
she kidding? She’d help clean up, yes, but she was hoping that in
the process Kirsty would render up a clue, one that would not only
satisfy some of Jean’s curiosity but earn her points with
Alasdair.

Her shoulder was against the door when she
heard voices. Brendan was saying, “You’ve got to give it to the
police.”

“Don’t you go telling me what needs doing,”
Kirsty replied. Dishes jangled and water ran.

“Listen, if that book’s important enough for
Iris to call and tell you to hide it, then it’s got to be important
enough to give to the police.”

“It’s one of Uncle Ambrose’s books. It’s got
nothing to do with the police, with your boat, with Tracy, with
Roger, with anything.”

“Then why hide it? Roger already has copies
of all of Ambrose’s books. Big deal.”

“So that’s it, is it? Roger. And here’s me,
thinking you wanted me for myself. No, it’s you who’s the spy, I
reckon, not Jonathan. You and your boss, coming here, digging
things up, it’s all your fault.”

“Our fault? We’ve had two people killed!”

“There’s work to be getting on with. Yours
and mine both. You’d best be away now.”

“Kirsty, I . . .”

A businesslike clatter of pots and pans
drowned out the rest of the sentence and also, probably, the sound
of Brendan’s crest falling. A door slammed, and a moment later he
strode past the dining room windows. He bore a shovel and that
universal masculine pout meaning,
Women! Can’t live with ‘em,
can’t live without ‘em!

Repelling male boarders seemed to be the
thing just now, Jean thought with a grimace. Kirsty might have more
justification for that than Jean had, though . . . From the kitchen
came the sound of china smashing, followed by a choice four-letter
word.

Charles and Sophie walked into the dining
room. When they saw Jean standing beside the door and holding her
dishes, they exchanged a cautious glance, probably wondering
whether this was some custom of the country they should know about.
With a bland smile in return, Jean put the dishes back on her table
and strolled leisurely out of the room and down the hall. Behind
her she heard the scrape of chairs, the kitchen door opening, and
Kirsty’s taut voice. “Tea is it? Coffee?”

So, if she were Kirsty hiding a book, where
would she put it? In her room? Jean didn’t know where Kirsty’s room
was. In the office off the foyer?

Kirsty’s voice still emanated from the dining
room. Picking up her pace, Jean went straight for the door marked
Private
. It was locked.

A rustling noise behind her made her spin
toward the brochures on the table—looking at them was an innocent
enough activity. But no one was sneaking up behind her. The
rustling noise, followed by a thud, came from the library.

Martin? One of the Ducketts? Ghosties and
ghoulies? Jean walked as casually as she could into the library.
The ranks of books, the mantelpiece, the display cases with their
ancient ornaments, Kirsty’s knitting piled on the wingback chair,
all were inert. Mandrake, though, crouched on the floor by the roll
top desk, guarding his victim, a rectangular shape in a bread bag.
He was sniffing so intently that his head was inside the bag.

Well, Jean thought, look what the cat dragged
in. Or off the desk, most likely—the sliding top of the desk wasn’t
quite shut, leaving plenty of room for an inquisitive paw to grope
around and an efficient claw to snag the plastic. Maybe Kirsty
thought the book would be suitably hidden in the desk, maybe she
tucked it away until she had a chance to put it somewhere else. Or
give it to Iris.

Knowing the folly of coming between a hunter
and his prey, Jean slowly pulled the package away from Mandrake. At
last the cat withdrew, his eyes crossed and his whiskers lopsided,
as though the sweet, moldy odor was heady as catnip. Maybe it
evoked rancid mouse.

To Jean and her full stomach, the odor was
even more nauseating than it had been. Depending on when Kirsty
took the book, it could have spent hours outside in the damp. Way
to go, she told herself. She should have put it in the lumber room
with the mildewed curtains.

Her morning caffeine suddenly cut in.
Wait
a minute
. How could Iris have told Kirsty to hide this book?
Iris didn’t know Jean even had it, let alone where it was. All Jean
had overheard was a suggestive reference to hiding one of Ambrose’s
books. She could have misinterpreted the entire conversation,
poetic justice for eavesdropping.

Still, Kirsty had taken the book and hadn’t
asked about it. Jean stood up, holding the book and the bag at
arm’s length. What to do now? Put it back in the desk? If she
didn’t, someone would miss it, whether Kirsty sooner or Iris later.
Or save it to show Alasdair? In the desk it wouldn’t smell up the
Lodge, and maybe Alasdair’s steel-trap mind could discern its
significance. Even Jean’s steel-sieve imagination couldn’t devise a
connection between Tracy’s murder and Aleister Crowley’s life
story.

Mandrake leaped onto the chair, snuggled up
next to Kirsty’s knitting, and began licking the odor into, or out
of, his multi-colored fur. Wrapping the bag back around the book,
Jean raised the lid of the desk a bit further. It squealed, not too
loudly, but loudly enough. Quickly, she leaned over and thrust the
book into what felt and sounded like a pile of papers. Her nostrils
flared. A cloying scent, stirred up by her movement, was either
that of flowers past their prime or a heavy perfume, or perhaps
even aromatic tobacco . . .

The smell was that of the nightly apparition
in the Lodge.

She straightened up, pushing the lid back
down to where it had been, slowly, so the squeal was as thin as her
nerves. Well, the desk had been Ambrose’s desk, and the book his
book, and the curtains in the lumber room had probably been his,
too. He haunted Pitclachie on several different levels. He and
Eileen’s tiny sepia-toned eyes were even watching her from the
photo atop the desk.

Abandoning Mandrake to his ablutions, Jean
fled into the open air. Outside, the sun was shining brightly,
drawing wraiths of mist up from the green fields and the glistening
surface of the loch to dissipate against the blue bowl of the sky.
So much for Thursday’s forecast of torrential rain. Although any
number of Thursday’s assumptions had been exploded by now, and too
many had been confirmed.

The sound of bells rippled down the cool
breeze. Jean was tempted to go sit in a church and think thoughts
of peace and justice, poetic or otherwise. She settled for
breathing deeply of the fresh air, which loosened the tight muscles
in her chest and shoulders so effectively she inhaled again. This
time she caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and looked around.

Martin Hall was standing where Tracy’s body
had lain, his long, thin neck cocked back as he peered up at the
tower. He looked like a stork swallowing a fish.