The Murder Hole (35 page)

“. . . back to Inverness,” Alasdair was
saying. “You’re off the case.”

“Here,” protested Sawyer, “you can’t be
giving me the sack over that little pervert Neville . . .”

“D.C. Gunn’s no more than a side issue. You
had your reasons along with your warning yesterday, and now you’re
away.”

Sawyer’s face took on the smirk of a stuffed
toad. “While you stay on with your bit of Yank . . .”

“Go on, say it, and you’ll find yourself
collecting litter bins in Stornoway so fast you’ll not have time to
pack that bloody great chip on your shoulder.”

Sawyer shrank back a step. “I’ll file a
complaint.”

“Be my guest. And hand that laptop in at the
local station while you’re about it.” Alasdair turned away and
paced toward the Lodge.

“Boss,” Sawyer called after him. His thick
features worked, but produced nothing except a squirm of his
moustache.

“You’ve had your second chance,” Alasdair
shot over his shoulder. “There’s no third.”

Jean heard Sawyer’s ponderous steps thudding
away and Alasdair’s light steps tapping swiftly nearer. His knock
was brisk and businesslike, like his confrontation with Sawyer. She
opened the door to see him a bit white around the cheekbones and
set around the jaw, but composed. Once he made a decision, then the
decision was made. She could do that, too. “Come on in. Ah, I
overheard . . .”

“Sorry for having it out below your
window.”

“I’m just glad there’s some justice left in
the world.” She stepped back so Alasdair could cross the threshold.
“I agree Gunn isn’t the entire issue, but still—Sawyer calling him
‘Nancy’ this morning should have tipped me off. What happened? Did
Gunn come out of the closet? That took courage.”

“Not a bit of it. One of Sawyer’s mates saw
him coming out of a gay club in Glasgow is all. Like as not the
lad’s just curious, working things out. But that’s his business and
none of mine.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” Jean said. “I saw him
talking to Brendan and Kirsty last night. Sawyer said something
nasty to him—I can imagine what—but Gunn was doing a great
imitation of you.”

“Eh?” Alasdair asked.

Great. He was barely in the door and she’d
already inserted her foot into her mouth. “You know, ah,
coolheaded.”

“With a shell, you’re meaning.” So he, too,
remembered his parting shot last month.
Don’t go breaking my
shell, woman, you might not like what’s inside.

She ducked his scrutiny, suddenly aware she
hadn’t yet combed her hair or applied lipstick, even more aware of
her own awareness. They stood, heads bowed in a moment of silence,
but not for the departed Sawyer.

At last Alasdair walked on into the living
room. “Are you planning to close the door at all?”

“Oh.” Jean waved her tweezers. “That
bracken’s a launching pad for ticks. One got me. I was going over
to the house. I figured Kirsty or Iris was used to dealing with
them.”

“No one’s there. They’re all away to their
dinners or the Festival. Andy and I were the last rats off the
ship. I can phone for a W.P.C. if you like.”

“Oh no, there’s no reason to drag one of your
people up here.”

“I’ll get it for you, then. Come into the
light.”

Slowly she shut the door. What did she
expect, that he’d let the insect go on injecting God knew what
bacteria into her body? No need to let her pendulum swing to the
touchy subject of his protecting her. No need to let it swing the
opposite way, either, to girly flusterment. She walked into the
glare of the kitchen light and hitched up her blouse. “A
policeman’s work is never done,” she said, and promptly kicked
herself for betraying her nervousness with a stupid joke.

Alasdair didn’t offer her a dunce cap. He
took the tweezers and went down on one knee behind her. “Ah,
there’s the wee bugger.”

His left hand cupped her waist the same way
his right hand had cupped the edge of the Stone, gently, almost
inquisitively, the smooth cool flesh of his palm against the smooth
warm flesh of her torso. His breath on her back made an exquisite
tickle. She felt heat mounting into her face and told herself that
if ever there was a time to be businesslike, this was it.

The tweezers poked and tugged delicately,
surgically. “There you are.” Alasdair went outside, ground his foot
against the paving stones, and wiped his shoe on the mat. When he
came back into the house, he closed and locked the door behind
him.

Jean realized she was still holding her
blouse bunched up beneath her breasts. Quickly she smoothed it down
around her hips. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”

“Then you’ve not been trying, have you now?”
he returned, but his face was hidden by the shadow of the vestibule
and she couldn’t see what variety of deadpan he was displaying.
“I’d better be washing my hands.”

“Just drop the tweezers in the bag by the
sink. And while you’re up there, take a look at the earrings in
Eileen’s portrait in the lumber room.”

His steps went up the stairs and down the
hall. Water ran. No, she thought, she hadn’t been trying. Well,
she’d been a trial to Brad, she supposed. She was certainly being
one to Alasdair.

The footsteps returned down the hall and
entered the lumber room. Jean contemplated the cool virtues of
salad, wondering if a tomato slice down the back of her neck would
help. Maybe she should mourn the summarily executed tick—talk about
an ice breaker! She expected to see icebergs bobbing along in
Alasdair’s wake as he descended the stairs, the sort of innocuous
icebergs that had sunk the
Titanic
, and yes, he was his
usual self-possessed self. Even though he was now carrying his
jacket and his tie over his arm, the top button of his shirt
unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up, exposing a plain, efficient
watch wrapping his wrist and a toothbrush emerging from his
pocket.

“Nice tie,” she said, diverting her gaze from
the pale vulnerability of his exposed throat. “Rennie Mackintosh
design?”

“Oh aye. Not so’s anyone at the cop shop has
noticed, mind. Philistines, one and all. Here’s a bit antiseptic
for the tick bite.” He handed over a damp cotton swab, then threw
his jacket and tie over the back of a chair.

So he’d dug through her cosmetics bag to find
the cotton and antiseptic. Well, it wasn’t as though she kept any
secrets there. Jean dragged the cotton across her back until the
sting told her she’d hit the spot. Wincing, she turned to see
Alasdair eyeing the bottle of whiskey.

“A drop of the creature, is it? May I?” At
her gesture of assent he poured dollops, added water, offered her a
glass, and lifted his. Behind the rim his eyes were aloof.
Businesslike. “Here’s to us.”

“Who’s like us?” she responded
appropriately.

“Damn few, and they’re all . . .” His mouth
formed the word “dead” but made no noise except an long exhalation
that she had no idea how to interpret.

With a sip that was more fire and air in her
mouth than liquid, Jean busied herself getting the food on the
table. She never quite looked at Alasdair. She didn’t need to.
Every one of her nerve endings was aware of him standing at the
window, a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in flesh.
Alone at
last
, she told herself. It was her move. He didn’t give third
chances.

One hand was knotted in his pocket. The glass
in his other hand glowed amber in the diffused sunlight. His keen
face was still as that of the Stone. He said, “‘The day has gone
down in the west, behind the hills into shadow.’”

She blanked on the next line of Tolkien’s
poem, but saw her chance. “The shorter versions of all three
Lord of the Rings
movies are on the shelf, there. We could
watch one after dinner.”

“Oh aye,” he returned.

“Sit down. Eat.”

With a polite smile that didn’t crinkle one
corner of his eyes, Alasdair sat down at the demilitarized zone of
the table and began to eat.

Jean rearranged her mashed potatoes rather
than trying to force them past the knot in her throat “Full
disclosure. I didn’t make the shepherd’s pie. I bought it. I’m sure
it’s nothing like . . .” She stopped before she said, your mother
used to make. She didn’t want to compare herself to any of the
women in his life.

Equably, he piled food onto the back of his
fork. “How was your day?”

“I cleaned up, missing the tick, and I
checked back with Miranda, so that she wouldn’t think I’d been
abducted by aliens, and I did the statement thing. I went down to
the Festival and hung out with Hugh, and reconfirmed with Kettering
that I’m on the list for the cruise tomorrow night.”

Alasdair nodded knowingly. “Oh aye, we’ll be
there as well.”

This time “we” meant various official
presences. “Then I went shopping. When I got back Roger was
wandering around like a stray dog looking for a handout. You could
almost count his psychic ribs. How have the mighty fallen. It’s
sad.”

“He’ll be allowed back to his dig tomorrow.
We’ve removed all the human bones.”

“Is the body Eileen’s, do you think?”

Alasdair chewed thoughtfully on a bite of
bread, his gaze focused unblinking on Jean’s face. Trying to decide
how much to tell her, probably. He swallowed and said, “Like as not
it is her body, with the evidence of the earring and all, though we
found only the one. Other associated artifacts indicate a modern
burial as well. The bones appear to be a woman’s. Just one thing. I
had a good look at the photo in the library, and the one on the
chair upstairs, and the only place you’re seeing Eileen’s left hand
is in the portrait.”

“Well, yes, she’s holding a rose.”

“The left forefinger of the skeleton in the
passage grave is missing its two end joints. And no, the bones
didn’t go astray in the tomb. The wound was healed up well before
death. Clean cut, the medicos are saying. With a meat cleaver or
the like.”

Ouch!
Jean made a face. “It must have
happened after she had the portrait painted. Unless the artist
painted her fingertip back in.”

“That sort of distinguishing mark’s right
helpful in identifying a body. DNA tests take weeks. I tried to get
onto Iris to ask her—not that she ever knew her mum, mind—but she’s
away again, to Fort Augustus, Kirsty’s saying.”

“You need to ask, yes—and if Iris doesn’t
know, my friend Michael Campbell-Reid’s grandmother probably
would.”

With a nod, Alasdair filed that bit of
information in his mental rolodex.

“But why would Eileen be whacking at a joint
of meat?” Jean went on. “She was born a princess and married as the
lady of the manor. Butcher or cook wasn’t in her job
description.”

“Oh aye, there is that.” Alasdair’s eye
sparked. Okay, Jean wondered, what bright idea was he about to
produce, like a rabbit out of hat? “I had a squint at your book as
well—aye, it was still in the desk in the library. It has a bit of
a pong, doesn’t it? Same smell’s in the box upstairs, something
both sweet and rotten. And the inscription, to ‘E,’ that’s a bit
suggestive, eh?”

So that’s what he was thinking. Jean gestured
with her fork, spearing the rabbit on the upswing. “The woman who
was killed and buried could have been Edith, not Eileen. All the
earring proves is that Eileen’s maid didn’t know what she was
talking about when she said no jewelry was missing.”

His features cracked into a grin, all the
more dazzling for being brief. “Got it in one. There’s your reason
for Eileen running through the shrubbery and also screaming down
the stairs.”

“Because it’s not her screaming down the
stairs.” In unison, they looked toward the staircase, where each
tread mounted innocently and emptily upwards into shadow, and then
turned back to each other. “But how can we prove that, Alasdair?
For one thing, if Edith is the skeleton, where the heck is Eileen?
Did Ambrose kill both of them?”

“Perhaps these papers of his tell the
story.”

“Roger sure seems to have those papers. Or
some of them. Maybe that’s what my mysterious prowler was looking
for, more papers. The lumber room would be the first place to look.
Maybe it wasn’t about me at all, and my notebook really did just
happen to fall out of my bag.”

“The same way Roger just happened to give you
a toy complete with a bug?”

“Oh. Well.”

“Still, Roger could well have been the
prowler. Or Tracy.”

Jean looked down at her plate. Once they’d
defaulted to discussing the case she’d inhaled her food with good
appetite. Without tasting it, particularly, but with good appetite.
She thought of the Dempseys arguing over their tea, and wondered if
Tracy had tasted anything of what had been her last supper. “Have
you learned anything from her body?”

“She died from the fall, no surprise there.
She’d taken a drink or two, though not enough to make her drunk.
You’re sure you saw someone in the tower room with her?”

“Yes, I am. I can see where she might have
fallen by accident, but then, wouldn’t whoever was there have come
running down to see about her?”

“Unless he or she didn’t want it known they’d
been together.”

“Which makes me think of Martin. Does he have
an alibi? I think I saw him with Tracy in her hotel room
yesterday.” Standing up, Jean stacked the plates and carried them
to the kitchen sink.

Alasdair appeared at her elbow with the salad
bowl and bread basket. “His wife’s saying he was with her and the
lad. They were awoken by Tracy’s scream and he ran to see what
happened.”

“Can we believe Noreen, though? She’s pretty
well brow-beaten. In my opinion, of course.”

Alasdair inclined his head, admitting her
opinion into evidence, and reached for the dishtowel. “The
Bouchards were at the ceilidh, aye, and Roger, and the Ducketts
were here asleep. Said they were awoken by people shouting and the
scream, and they heard someone running down the hall. Which leaves
them without a proper alibi, mind.”