The Burning Glass (42 page)

“Flinty Minty. The posh bitch.” Horrified,
Derek leaned up against his mother’s side as though he was a
marsupial aiming for the maternal pouch. Valerie put her arm around
him.

Jean remembered Minty looking into Linda’s
pram in the hallway of the museum. She and Angus had no children.
No heirs to the Rutherford name. No wonder she’d been so resentful
of Valerie and Derek. Of Noel and Polly and their daughters, for
that matter.

“Wallace now, he thought I deserved a share,”
Valerie went on. “But all he could do was send Ciara to me, so’s I
could answer questions about the dig and Gerald. She paid me, fair
and square, for helping her with her research, her little books and
tours and all. When the bakery went bust she offered me work here.
We’ll not long be taking charity from me uncle and from Polly and
Noel.”

“Why’s Ciara got a tattoo of a harp like
yours?” asked Alasdair, drawing a raised brow from Delaney.

Valerie’s tip-tilted smile indicated she,
too, knew Alasdair’s role in Ciara’s life. “We got to be good
mates. Sisters, like. I said, let’s get us tattoos, just for
laughs, and Ciara, she says, let’s get ones like the Ferniebank
clarsach, ’cause Ferniebank’s changed our lives. And now it’s
called me back, just as it’s called her. The pair of us, we’ll set
the place to rights, and we’ll find us our fortunes along the
way.”

“Does Ciara know about the jewelry?” Delaney
asked.

“Aye. Very accepting person, Ciara is.”

Alasdair went a bit cross-eyed at that.

“Minty doesn’t know you’re working with
Ciara, does she?” asked Delaney.

“She was obliged to tiptoe round Minty, right
enough, with her book and with me and all. Minty was right narked
that I was back in town—no one’s ever told her no before. Ciara’s
worth two of Minty, for all her daft ideas.”

“Do you believe her daft ideas, then?”
Delaney asked. “Is there a map?”

Valerie shrugged. “Ciara says if it’s not
amongst Wallace’s papers, then it’s here at Ferniebank. He told her
the day he died he knew there was proof, though just what and where
it was, he was saving for the next time he saw her. Derek here
heard him hinting about it to Roddy and Minty—trying to convince
them they were wrong about Ciara, I reckon.”

“During the argy-bargy, like,” added Derek.
“Me and Zoe, we heard him saying, ‘I’ve got the proof, and you’ll
be sorry when it comes out.’ ”

Proof?
Good grief, she’d been right.
Jean looked at Alasdair, but he was eyeing the massive flashlight,
standing like a flagpole on the corner of Delaney’s table. The pit
prison. Wallace had forced himself down the ladder soon after he’d
taunted Roddy and Minty. Soon after Minty had spilled the beans to
Logan, who intervened. Soon after eating his fatal meal.

“Proof? And I’m Duke of Argyll.” Delaney
rolled his eyes heavenward. “Who stole the clarsach from the
Stanelaw Museum?”

“That was poor old Angus. Ciara kept going on
and on about the music and the map and all, and how Gerald must
have known all about it, and what a pity the harp was locked up in
the museum with the key in Minty’s grasping hands, else we could
have ourselves a look.”

“Angus disassembled it looking for a second
secret compartment with the, ah, map,” said Alasdair. “Then he
couldn’t put it together again, so he left it in a safe place.”

“We’ve tracked him from Brussels,” Kallinikos
said. “He took a train through the Chunnel, hired a car in Dover,
and stopped at a pawn shop there. The dates match. And the London
shop’s half a mile from the auction house where the harp turned
up.”

“Angus was a bit timid,” Valerie said, “and
clumsy as an ox to boot, but a good chap overall.”

“You last saw him at the dinner at the
Granite Cross?” asked Delaney.

“That I did. Poor old guy. All this time he’d
been going along, the way he did all his life, I reckon. Then, on
the Saturday, Ciara told him of her book deal. And the balloon went
up. Minty wasn’t best pleased with Ciara’s tales, but she carried
on, seeing advantages for herself. A book, though, about Isabel and
the harp as secret agents of the Templars and all . . .”

“Would attract attention to Gerald,” Alasdair
finished. “He wrote about the jewelry, did he? Wallace knew he put
it in Isabel’s grave.”

“Wallace being the expert on Gerald and
Gerald being the expert on Isabel.” Valerie ran both her hands
through her hair, so that it stood on end like Derek’s.

That’s what Angus and Ciara had been talking
about in the van, Jean thought, when Ciara dismissed his concerns
with a laugh. Angus had gone home to Minty, and—what? Had she
realized something had gone wrong, and extracted the news from him
like extracting a tooth? However she’d learned the truth, her
response had been to once again fill her little vial of poison.
Poor old Angus indeed, steamrolled by the women in his life, Minty
with cool deliberation, Ciara casually, cheerfully, carelessly.

Delaney sat back in his chair, folding his
hands over his waistcoat as though after a good meal. “With the
book, folk would start asking questions about the jewelry. There’s
motive for you.”

“Over and beyond eliminating the purveyors of
embarrassing fancies,” added Alasdair. “With Ciara and Wallace
gone, Minty could run Ferniebank as she saw fit. Eat her cake and
have it as well.”

Yeah, but
. . . Catching Alasdair’s
frown, Jean said, “What about Wallace?”

Kallinikos flipped through his notebook.
“Polly Brimberry brought him his last meal, the leftover food from
a cooking class.”

“Helen and Polly took him dozens of those,”
Valerie said. “Easy enough to add a bit of poison. Proving it, now
. . .”

Delaney’s hands tightened, no doubt with
heartburn. Derek shifted restlessly and dropped his mug. Valerie
made a one-handed catch and gave it to Kallinikos.

Jean realized she was hearing voices and
vehicles. Lights flashed. She looked over her shoulder to see
headlights glaring through the gate, the media following Delaney
from Kelso. Then the gate shut with a clang behind two patrol
cars.

From one issued W.P.C. Blackhall, who marched
toward the door of the incident room. Kallinikos brushed past Jean
to intercept her, and after a muttered consultation announced to
Delaney, “The dustbins at the pub are overflowing, but the
crime-scene lads are having a good look. Minty’s at Glebe
House.”

“Watch the house,” Delaney replied. “If she
leaves, follow her. Get on to Edinburgh for a search warrant. Don’t
put her wind up just yet, though. Patience, that’s the ticket.”

Alasdair cleared his throat, a noise that
sounded suspiciously like a snicker.

Outside, D.C. Linklater was pulling a sturdy,
flat box from the rear seat of the second car. P.C. Logan rushed
around from the driver’s side and took the opposite end. Walking
crabwise, they carried the box into the incident room and set it on
Delaney’s table, causing a domino effect as people moved aside.
Derek saw his chance and slipped out into the courtyard.

Jean found herself wedged against Alasdair,
his cold, hard forearm angled across her back. She leaned away,
toward the dozen or so pieces of inscription from Isabel’s grave
that lay jumbled together in a jigsaw puzzle. The flakes and dust
knocked from their edges sprinkled the bottom of the box like pale
cinnamon. The reddish sandstone had not only been easier to carve
than the local gray whinstone, a volcanic rock, perhaps Isabel’s
family had chosen its color as a reproof to her murderers.

Jean imagined the pieces reassembled—that one
against that one, and the bits from the museum fitting in along the
edge. The
er
of Sinncler bent upwards because of a nodule in
the sandstone, and the
requies
was separated from the
catin
for the same reason. And that really was a crack in
the stone, not an “m.” The inscription wasn’t a secret code. It was
a memorial, a souvenir of death. Perhaps Isabel’s family had chosen
the cross patte in honor of their Templar ancestors. Perhaps they
meant it to signify that Isabel, too, had been a warrior.

X marks the spot.
Hic jacet
. . . She
didn’t realize she was speaking until she heard her own voice.
“Here lies Isabel Sinclair who died in the year of Our Lord 1569.
Pray for her soul. Rest in peace.”

“Rest in peace,” said Valerie. “I’m thinking
not. Not a bit of it.”

Logan looked around, targeting Valerie with
an antagonistic gaze.

Linklater rolled his shoulders. “Roddy
Elliot, I reckon he could lift a cow. That’s no light load, even
piled into a gunny sack.”

Jean imagined Roddy standing beside the
chapel, waiting until the lights in the flat went out. Waiting
until she and Alasdair were otherwise occupied and wouldn’t hear
the tap of chisel on stone. He had justified his act to himself.
Most people could justify their acts to themselves. “Keep the
dust,” she said. “A skilled restorer can make a sort of glue from
it and use it to put everything back together. Well, except for the
harp. That’s long gone.”

“Roddy didn’t chuck the pieces into the
river,” said Alasdair, “thanks for small mercies.”

Valerie sidled toward the door. “I’d not be
using Roddy’s name and the word ‘mercy’ in the same sentence. He
was always out and about spreading his gloom and doom, but now,
going on about his dog poisoned and Helen murdered—was it from him,
do you think, that she got the idea?”

“Macquarrie got the idea to poison Angus, you
mean?” Logan asked.

“P.C. Logan,” said Delaney, “when you took
Mrs. Rutherford’s statement the Saturday, did you take her
fingerprints as well?”

Logan’s dark features shriveled like a prune.
“Why should I have done?”

“Because,” Delaney told him, “it was your
duty. Now look what’s happened . . .”

Alasdair’s arm pressed against Jean’s back.
Retrieving the flashlight, he urged her on out the door behind
Valerie and Derek. After the crowded little room with its lingering
odors of machine oil and paint, the outside air was cold on her
bare arms, raising goose pimples.

Linklater followed, and Kallinikos shut the
door on Delaney’s pompous voice. “You’ll be obliged to make new
statements,” he told Derek and Valerie both. “Kelso, the morn.”

“What of Ciara?” asked Valerie. “And Keith,
come to that. He’s a bit naff, but a decent enough sort even
so.”

“They’ll be released as soon as may be.”

Jean surveyed the courtyard, the cars, the
constables, ill-met by sallow lamplight and pallid moonlight. She
looked up at the castle, at the glow of reddish, orange, golden
light in the window of Isabel’s room. Of all the people in the
courtyard, only she and Alasdair could see that. His face tilted
toward that phantom light, away from Jean’s gaze.

She turned to Valerie. “The burning-glass
isn’t listed in the Ancient Monuments report. Minty says it was
Gerald’s shaving mirror.”

“Gerald kept it in a velvet pouch, Wallace
was saying. Like a relic.”

Jean felt but not did not meet Alasdair’s
gaze. Gerald must have taken it out of Isabel’s grave—Ciara had
implied as much. Maybe she was right about it being a signal
device. Even a stopped clock was right twice a day.

“Good night, sir,” Derek said to Alasdair as
Valerie bundled him into her car. The constables cleared a way
through the watchers at the gates. Kallinikos returned to the
incident room, where Delaney was still bullying Logan. Not that
Logan didn’t deserve it.

Jean found herself standing with Alasdair in
a clearing in the activity. She would have asked
now what?
except she knew now what. “Wallace. The dungeon.”

“Oh aye.” Slapping the flashlight across the
palm of his opposite hand, Alasdair strode toward the front door of
the castle.

The Laigh Hall was still shadowy, and even
colder than it had been earlier. Jean shut the window. Then,
squaring her shoulders, she joined Alasdair at the rim of the
dungeon. “Hold the torch,” he said, once again pressing its barrel
into her hand.

She held the flashlight, shining it first on
the ladder at his feet as he climbed down, then around the tiny
chamber. Stone, dust, a small black creepie-crawlie just vanishing
into a crevice. No more shiny objects. No neon signs flashing “This
is it!” Or even defining “it,” for that matter. When Alasdair
reached up, she lay down on her stomach to hand him the light.

The stone against her breast was gritty, and
not just cold but damp, centuries of dark, chill winter days
filtering up into her flesh and then into her bones in a physical
equivalent of her psychic reaction to the paranormal. She felt as
though she was sinking into the stone, the walls closing in, the
stench filling her lungs like black water. . . .

“Jean,” said Alasdair, so sharply she
realized he’d already said her name once. “Here.”

She grabbed the flashlight and forced herself
to a sitting position. “Nothing?”

“Sod-all. What Wallace was on about—well,
it’s easy to say he was mad, but even madness often has a logic to
it.” Alasdair dragged himself up the ladder, coughed and cleared
his throat, and dropped the trap door with a resounding crash that
echoed into the empty chambers above.

What would it have sounded like, Jean asked
herself, if Derek had fallen into the pit prison? The question sat
in the pit of her stomach like a bowling ball.

“Mr. Cameron?” W.P.C. Blackhall stood in the
main doorway. “D.I. Delaney—”

“I’m just coming.” Alasdair reached a cold,
gritty hand, the same hand that had held Derek at the brink, down
for Jean’s hand and hauled her to her feet. She couldn’t read his
expression—in fact, he was doing a superb job of not having
one.