The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (34 page)

The lifeless form of their victim was hanging limply from the marker stone, wisps of smoke curling up from the deep black scorch mark over his breast. Both the medallion and the jewel pendant from his collar were slagged, acrid smoke still curling upward from scorched silk and wool. The surrounding snow had been melted, leaving the ground bare and blackened. Cautiously, at Raeburn’s gesture of permission, some of the other members of the group edged forward to examine the victim. In their deference, Raeburn also noted fear and respect not unmingled with envy; and he savored the satisfaction that awareness brought.

Off in the distance, the wail of a siren gradually grew louder, very likely an indication that the recent pyrotechnics above the burying ground had not gone unnoticed. At Raeburn’s curt instruction, as he pulled on coat and hat and scarf, one of his associates stripped the slagged remains of the lynx pendant from the victim’s body with a well-insulated hand while another began loosing the silken bonds that bound the body to the marker stone. When they had lowered it to the ground, the first man cut and removed the tape binding the corpse’s wrists. These measures completed, Raeburn allowed himself to be escorted back to the waiting taxi by two of his minions, leaving the other members of the group to disperse as swiftly and silently as they had come. By the time the first police patrol car turned into Waterloo Place, the Old Calton Road Burial Ground was empty except for the sleeping dead of bygone days and the charred corpse of a man lately struck by lightning.

* * *

At Strathmourne, meanwhile, Adam and his associates remained yet unaware of this latest escalation in the campaign of the Lodge of the Lynx. Focused for the past two days on protecting Gillian Talbot, they had this afternoon secured her transfer to Strathmourne to begin a new phase of her treatment. Gillian was now settled in a cozy room in the east wing that once had served as a nursery parlor, her mother installed in another room across the hall.

This evening, to welcome Iris Talbot to Strathmourne and underline the relaxed, homelike atmosphere they hoped would provide a breakthrough in her daughter’s condition, Philippa had arranged an informal dinner party that included not only Peregrine, for whom Mrs. Talbot had conceived an adoring fascination since noting his effect on Gillian, but also Christopher and Victoria Houston, who had driven up from Kinross to bolster the ranks. The redoubtable Mrs. Gilchrist had readily agreed to take up her former vocation as a nurse, to sit with Gillian while the rest of the household dined.

By the time the dinner party had chatted their way amiably through leek and Stilton soup, Chicken Wellington, and damson crumble, Iris Talbot was well on her way to being at ease in her new surroundings. Philippa was about to suggest they retire to the front parlor for coffee when the telephone rang.

“Humphrey will see to it,” Adam said, with a smile for Iris Talbot, who had started at the noise. “Unless it’s an emergency, I don’t take calls during dinner.” A buzzer sounded discreetly from the telephone across the room. “On the other hand, some calls do have to be dealt with. Why don’t the rest of you carry on into the parlor, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

That assurance was not to be carried out, however, for the caller was a grim-voiced Noel McLeod.

“Brace yourself, Adam,” the inspector said. “A man wearing Masonic regalia has just been found dead in the Old Calton Road Burial Ground, between the railroad tracks and Calton Hill. Get this—the man appears to have been
struck by lightning.
I’m just on my way there, and thought you might want to join me—you and young Lovat, if he’s available. Make sure he brings something to draw with, just in case.”

Just over an hour later, with Peregrine sitting anxiously beside him, Adam nosed the Range Rover into line behind half a dozen police vehicles parked along the north side of Waterloo Place, just across the street from the entrance to Old Calton Road Cemetery. Police barriers had been set up around the entrance itself, and an ambulance was waiting at the curb, flashing blue lights eerie in the slight snowfall that continued to come down.

“This looks not a little ominous,” Adam said, as he and Peregrine got out of the car.

With a grunt of agreement, Peregrine tucked just a sketch pad under his arm and followed Adam dutifully across the street, squinting against the snow and belatedly pulling on fingerless gloves.

“We’re here at the request of Inspector McLeod,” Adam told the uniformed officer posted at the barrier, presenting his card. “Can you tell me where to find him?”

“Aye, sir.” The officer half-turned and pointed to a concentration of floodlights up among the gravestones at the upper level of the burial ground. “He’ll be somewhere up there. Just watch yourself, though—the ground’s pretty mucky.”

“Thank you,” Adam said briskly.

Together he and Peregrine sidestepped the barrier and made their way through the gate. In passing, Adam noticed the heavy length of chain lying on the ground beside the gatepost, the accompanying padlock neatly snipped, probably with a set of bolt-cutters. Farther up the slope, the air was tainted with the acrid odor of burnt flesh.

“Dear Jesus!” Peregrine murmured, on a constricted note of revulsion.

He raised a gloved hand to cover his mouth and nose, all but gagging. In the same instant, Adam caught sight of McLeod’s overcoated form among the figures moving in and out among the floodlights. As he waved an arm to draw the inspector’s attention, McLeod looked down and saw them. His strong, well-defined face showed pale and grim in the acetylene glare as he came to meet them.

“You took long enough!” he muttered, though the comment came of nerves rather than any real annoyance, for he knew they had come as quickly as they could. “The medics and the police pathologist have been after me for the last half hour to let them remove the body, but I wanted you to see things as we found them. Limber up your sketching hand, Mr. Lovat.”

Beckoning them to follow, he led the way up through a web-work maze of yellow police tape onto a stretch of winter-dead turf between two grey stone tomb-houses. Rounding the corner of the right-hand edifice a step behind Adam, Peregrine jibbed slightly at the sight of a corpse sprawled in an ungainly heap on a patch of scorched and muddy earth a few yards away, but he managed not to break stride as he continued forward. As he cast his gaze over the body, a chilly sense of residual violence took him in the face like a ship from an open hand.

He caught his breath and flinched back. McLeod and Adam both looked around, but he made a mute gesture of disclaimer and focused his attention on the dead man. The victim looked to be about the same age as McLeod; a solid, workman-like individual wearing the charred remnants of a Masonic collar and a now-muddy apron over a dark suit. The cause of death was plain to be seen from the blackened ruin in the center of his chest, almost as if he had been struck by a mortar round. Reaching into his coat pocket for a pencil, Peregrine flipped open his sketch pad with the other hand and took a couple of deep breaths, narrowing his eyes as he also sought to look beyond the immediate scene to the events that had preceded it. It was hard to sift out the violence, but as he reached toward a deeper level of perception, the scene before him came to life with the ghostly transparency that betokened the visionary nature of what he was witnessing.

He saw now an assembly of figures robed and hooded in white, drawn up in a circle around the victim, reminiscent of Randall Stewart’s slaying. The lynx medallions those had worn were conspicuously absent, but rings adorned each right hand, as they had that other night, and the faces were obscured by more than just the hoods. The one who seemed to be the leader wore about his neck a dark, heavy necklet that drew Peregrine like a magnet—though when he tried to focus on it, the details blurred.

Calling up reserves of concentration, Peregrine tried to picture it more clearly. It had about it an unmistakable aura of malignancy. He was able to capture a fleeting impression of fluid pictographs assembled in configurations of power. But before the impression could stabilize, a sudden backlash of pain seared white-hot behind his eyes, blotting out the vision.

The pain was so intense that he choked and doubled over, vaguely clawing at his face. Two strong pairs of hands came to his support to save him from falling, gradually easing him upright again as he recovered, but even thinking about the unknown neck adornment made him nauseated, pain stabbing again behind his eyes.

“Steady on,” Adam’s deep voice said in his ear. “Let go of whatever’s causing this reaction. It isn’t worth it.”

Cool, firm fingers came to rest on his brow. At once the pain grew easier. Peregrine gulped air, only gradually daring to open his eyes again as the hand fell away.

“Adam, I think this lot were the same ones that killed Randall Stewart,” he murmured cautiously, surprised to find pad and pencil still in his hands. “The leader had something around his neck—a—a necklet or—maybe a torc.”

“Somehow I thought he might,” Adam said quietly. “But that’s all for now. Don’t try to work on the image. The object itself is far too well-shielded. How are you doing?”

Peregrine nodded. The pain had subsided and he found he could see normally again.

“Better. You don’t want me to focus on the leader, then?” he asked.

“Not at that cost,” Adam said. “Not now. Not here. Were you getting any other Images before he shut you down?”

“Oh, yes,” Peregrine replied. “All
kinds
of good details . . .”

His voice trailed off as his gaze shifted again toward the figure slumped at the foot of the gravestone, his pencil already moving over the top sheet of his sketch pad. At the look of abstraction that crossed his face, Adam and McLeod moved off a few yards, satisfied that the young artist was once more in command of his faculties but ready to come to his rescue again if need be. With Peregrine’s help, they might yet learn something useful from tonight’s outrage. Beside Adam, McLeod squared his shoulders.

“Well, then. Another Mason killed under circumstances that can only be described as bizarre,” he muttered. “Don’t you know the papers are going to have a field day tomorrow.”

Adam grimaced. He could just imagine the headlines. Aloud he said, “Did you know the man?”

“Only slightly,” McLeod replied. “His name is—was—Ian MacPherson. Had his own joinery business in Lochend, where his Lodge is located.” He indicated the dead man’s apron and collar and pursed his lips in darkling speculation.

‘’I’d be willing to bet this is their regular Lodge night. My guess is that he must’ve been nabbed just before the meeting was about to start—maybe even on the Lodge premises themselves. I’ve sent Donald over there to make inquiries. As one of their own, so to speak, he’ll be more likely to get information than some—but only if there’s something to tell.”

He paused and shook his head. “I don’t know, Adam. Randall’s death was bad enough—but this begins to get
really
spooky. If we don’t get to the bottom of this mess pretty soon, we’re likely to find ourselves with a public witch-hunt on our hands. And what’s worse, the self-appointed witch-hunters will be looking in all the wrong places—with the Masonic Order itself at the top of the list.”

“All too true, I’m afraid,” Adam agreed soberly. “What else can you tell me just now?
Was
MacPherson struck by lightning?”

McLeod scowled like a thundercloud. “So the evidence would suggest. First there’s the localized shock-burn in the center of the chest. Then there’s the fact that MacPherson’s wristwatch stopped at 8: 17—which pinpoints the time of death. The coins in his pockets were reduced to slag—another documented feature associated with victims of lightning strikes. I’m not a doctor, but it seems fairly convincing to me.”

Adam nodded grimly.

“This would be far easier to explain,” McLeod continued, “if this were summer in the tropics. But electrical storm weather is pretty freakish for Scotland in winter. I wish I could pretend to believe that this whole thing was an elaborate crime perpetrated under studio conditions by someone who’d seen one too many horror films. As it is, we’ve got a couple of witnesses who claim they saw strange clouds massing over the graveyard only moments before the lightning strike took place.”

Adam’s gaze sharpened. “Why does this suddenly sound like some of the stories that came out in conjunction with that incident up at Balmoral last month?”

McLeod blinked. “Do you think there might be a connection?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said, “but it’s a theory worth looking into.”

He might have said more, but at that moment, Peregrine hurried back to join them, his face showing a mixture of revulsion and excitement.

“Look at this!” he said, and held out his sketch pad for their inspection.

Adam took the pad and tilted it toward the light. The drawing showed MacPherson lashed to the memorial stone at whose foot he now lay, wearing not only the apron and collar of the Master of a Lodge but also a circular medallion hanging round his neck by a long chain. The device on the face of the medallion was that of a snarling head of a lynx.

“The others weren’t wearing them this time,” Peregrine explained, as his mentors gazed at the drawing. “They wore rings, but no medallions. It isn’t there now, of course,” he added, indicating the Lynx medallion with a touch of one finger. “They—the men in white—must have removed it after the lightning strike took place. But why put it on him, unless—”

“Unless it was a factor in completing the ritual,” Adam mused. “Yes, that would fit the pattern. The medallion acts like a homing beacon, drawing down the fire of whatever force our opposite numbers are trying to unleash on the material world.”

“X marks the spot,” said McLeod, with a tight show of teeth. “Otherwise known as the Judas touch.”