Ashes to Ashes (12 page)

“Yes, I had a good time.”

His eyes glinted briefly up at her. “He must be a dab hand at the chattin’ up. Your lipstick’s a’ smudged.”

Touche. Hastily she reached into her pocket for a tissue. “What do you have against him, anyway?” she asked.

“He’s fair taen wi’ himsel’, no doot aboot it. Poncin’ aboot wi’ yon fancy claes, fancy car, fancy manners.”

“Nothing wrong with good manners,” said Rebecca. “Or with clothes and cars, for that matter.”

Michael discarded Eric’s manners with an abrupt gesture that almost sent the brush flying across the room. “Treats me like a bluidy dogsbody. Always flytin’ and bletherin’ aboot, what’s this worth, allow for extra insurance, can you no leave this or that behind.”

“That’s his job,” Rebecca protested.

Michael glared at her. As though his words were a cork popping from a champagne bottle he blurted, “That’s as may be, if that’s all there was. But he tried tae gie me the sack. What the museum and the state dinna ken’ll no hurt them, he said. A little extra here and there, set aside the pretty things tae sell tae collectors and never gie a cheep aboot it. I pretended I dinna ken what he was on aboot, but I took a scunner tae him, right enough.”

The whiskey had thickened Michael’s accent almost to incomprehensibility. Rebecca registered the rhythm but had to struggle for the meaning of the words. “Please,” she groaned. “You’re laying it on awfully thick. I’ve heard you talking what your southern neighbors would call proper English— would you mind?”

His hands stopped dead at their task. Expressive, probing hands that moved as if they searched for rabbits in hats. Long elegant fingers, and slender wrists that seemed almost fragile… . The blue flare in his eyes dragged Rebecca’s gaze to his face and focused her thought.

“I can talk just like a Beeb newsreader,” he said in a clipped Oxbridge accent. “Excuse me, BBC announcer to you. I’ve lived in London. I’ve had an English lass. Lady friend, except she was no lady.” He rammed the brush so violently into the chanter that Rebecca flinched. “I’m no ashamed o’ bein’ a Scot,” he concluded, sliding back into the rich tones of his native brogue. “I’ll no call my country ‘North Britain’, or talk like a toffee-nosed twit just tae please the absentee landlords bleedin’ the land dry, thank you just the same.”

Rebecca inquired, “How much did you have to drink?”

“I’m perfectly sensible. I just took a wee drap, for which I’m properly grateful tae you.” He raised his chin with exaggerated dignity. “You’re none tae sober yoursel’.”

No, she wasn’t. She collapsed into a chair, kicked off her shoes and closed her eyes. Her mind was filling with a glutinous substance like cotton candy, across which memory left slow, sticky prints. Ray’s smile. The claymore. Eric’s eyes in the candlelight. A perfume bottle on the windowsill. Michael’s hands. She peeked through her lashes. “What did you say?”

“Too much,” Michael replied sheepishly. “Sorry.”

Rebecca opened her eyes the rest of the way. She’d accepted that when a man was drunk he was aggressive, blustering around looking for a fight; her father and her brothers always did. Her mother got sloppy and pitiful when she’d had too much.

That was Michael, apologizing just when she when she’d thought she had him typed. “I’m sorry, too. I talk about manners and then criticize your speech. I don’t know what’s come over me. Everything here’s so— so intense.”

Michael nodded. “Just that.”

A curl at one corner of his almost-sensitive mouth reminded her of the tissue in her hand, and she scrubbed at her lipstick. What had she intended to ask? Oh. “You said Eric tried to give you the sack? Get you fired?”

“The state’ll no take kindly tae my doctorin’ the books for him.”

“You’re sure that’s what he wanted?”

So much for that hint of tenderness. Again his mouth tightened in irritation. “I’m no sure. He only implied, he said naething direct. He’s a lawyer, him and his silver tongue.”

Rebecca tensed, waiting for Michael to make some awful joke about the manifest abilities of Eric’s tongue, but he nobly resisted.

“I think he tried tae buy me,” he concluded, “and I must’ve gie him the pip when he couldna. Probably never found anything money couldna buy.”

“It won’t buy justice,” said Rebecca.

Michael looked up at her from under his brows. “
He maun hae justice, or faith he’ll take it, man,
” he sang in an untrained but agreeable tenor.

Yeah, Rebecca thought, it’s his word against yours. She opened her mouth to tell him what Eric had said about him and then clamped it shut. No sense in lighting his fuse again. “You gave him the pip?” She pictured some arcane British version of an obscene gesture.

“I annoyed him. Wi’ any luck, half as much as he annoyed me.”

“I think you did.” She frowned, squeezing thought from her mind. Assuming anyone had an embezzlement scheme was one heck of a leap. If Eric was the shady party, then he could’ve told her it was Michael just to shunt suspicion away from himself. If it was Michael, he could be throwing suspicion on Eric. But how could he know Eric had even brought up the subject? It would’ve been easier just to keep quiet. And how, for that matter, would Eric have known Michael would mention it?

Maybe Eric was slick as well as— well, physically compelling. He was also the trustworthy family retainer. If he’d wanted to embezzle or steal anything, he could’ve done it a long time ago.

Each thought dissolved, airy and slightly sickening. Eric and Michael had had trouble communicating, Rebecca told herself. That was all. No one was trying to embezzle anything.

The silence was tangible, the rush of wind and rain muted here behind the thickest walls of the castle. When Michael lay down the brush it sounded as if he’d struck the table with a two-by-four. He picked up a rag, started polishing, and sang, “
The news frae Moidart came yestereen, will soon gar mony ferlie, for ships o’ war hae just come in, and landed Royal Charlie.
”

“1745,” said Rebecca. “But you don’t like Charlie.”

“What I like are the old songs.
We hae tint our plaid, bonnet, belt and swordie, how they’ll skip and dance ower the bum of Geordie.
”

“1715. Also a disaster, for the Highlanders at least.”

“
Ye’d better kiss’d King Willie’s loof, than come to Killiecrankie-o.
”

“And more civil war. Are there any songs for Bannockburn?”

“There’s always ‘Scots Wha Hae,’ if you dinna mind the gore.” Michael considered the bottle of whiskey and shook his head. “
The flowers o’ the Forest are a’ wede away.
”

“Flodden Field, 1513. Utter catastrophe.” Rebecca’s stomach muttered unhappily beneath her ribs, sending a revolting taste of chocolate and garlic into her throat. Justice, perhaps, for having eaten or drunk, flirted or fought, for having felt more than she’d let herself feel in years. Not that it mattered. If justice couldn’t be bought, it couldn’t even be defined. And Michael had to sit over there singing about lost causes.

That was it. When he was drunk he was maudlin, a typical Celt. Just like me, she told herself. She struggled to her feet and was mildly surprised the heaviness of her skull didn’t flip her head over heels like a baby’s toy.

“
But pith and power, till my last hour, I’ll make this declaration: we’re bought and sold for English gold, such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
Even though some o’ my ancestors were doin’ the sellin’.” Michael glanced up. “You look fair clapped oot. Get on wi’ you.”

“I think I will. Can you get all the lights?”

His hand stopped moving on the chanter. “What lights?”

“Every light in the place is on.” She spoke with exaggerated enunciation; why was he always denying such stupid insignificant things? “Will you please turn them off?”

“Every light in the place is on?”

Rebecca moaned under her breath— spare me— and gestured toward the entry. Michael put down his work and went to look. He stood a long moment gazing up the stairs, stiff and still, his hands clasped at his sides. “Oh. I see. Aye then, I’ll do the lights.”

Rebecca muttered something she hoped he’d interpret as thanks and started upstairs. She had a bottle of aspirin up there, a goal as tempting as the gold of El Dorado. She took a step, and another. The landing. The study on one side, the Hall on the other. Rain beating against the windows.

Behind her Michael was singing, “
She’s just a Kelty Clippie, she’ll no take nae advice, it’s och drap deid, away bile your heid, I’ll punch your ticket twice.
” So he’d had an affair with an Englishwoman which had come to a bitter ending. Something to do with that tartan chip, maybe.

Darnley sat in the corridor outside the door of Rebecca’s room, hunched and bristling, his yellow eyes focused on the next flight of stairs. Rebecca stopped dead, her arm holding her coat and her purse tightening in a spasm of— no, not fear. The cat was just watching for a mouse or something. She stepped around Darnley, her neck and shoulders cramping with the effort it took her to not look up the staircase.

She stood in the doorway of her room. Her brain detonated inside her skull. Her eyes bulged. Now she knew what Michael was capable of. She shouted his name. No reply. She tried again, her rage adding so much volume she recoiled from her own voice. “Michael Campbell, get yourself up here!”

Far, far away she heard his voice. “Ah, dinna get your knickers in a twist.” His footsteps scuffed with agonizing slowness up the staircase. When he at last appeared, he stopped abruptly, eyeing the cat.

Darnley arched like a Halloween mascot, looked up with a disinterested air, and glided away. Michael said, elaborately nonchalant, “He just sits like that sometimes. I dinna ken why. What’re you on aboot?”

“Damn the cat,” said Rebecca. “Look here.” She flapped her hands toward her room and its contents, bathed in the uncompromising blaze of the ceiling light she had not left on.

Michael stepped forward and looked.

Underwear lay strewn across bedcovers so tangled they might as well be tied in knots. The wardrobe gaped, vomiting blouses, skirts and slacks. Shoes lay on the dressing table, and oddments of jewelry and cosmetics lay on the floor amid upturned drawers. The postcard from the mirror was stuck jauntily in a corner of Elspeth’s picture, while Ray’s picture lay face downward on the carpet amid a spatter of broken glass. The clock and the tape player were tied together by the ribbon from the typewriter, all three in a disconsolate pile. The old copy of
Man of Iron
spewed torn pages across the mess.

Michael’s brows were question marks across his forehead. His mouth hung open. “I take it you dinna leave it like this?”

“What kind of fool do you think I am?” she demanded. “You think you can just waltz up here and do this and I wouldn’t know it was you?”

His mouth clamped shut and his eyebrows plummeted. His face snapped around to hers. “What kind o’ fool do you take me for? I didna do this.”

“Then who? The odd passing poltergeist?”

A page or two from the book stirred restlessly in a draft. The lights emitted white auras of glare. The words hung between them, twisting as slowly as corpses from a gibbet.

“Ah, bugger it!” exclaimed Michael. He flung his hands wide, as if throwing away something distasteful, and then brought them to his chest protectively clenched into fists. “I’ll help you sort it oot.” He bent and scooped up the curling iron, its cord a dead snake across the threshold.

“Not so fast,” said Rebecca. “Answer my question. Who?”

Michael threw the curling iron onto the bed. His hand seized Rebecca’s forearm. The fingers that had appeared so fragile doing delicate work now crushed her with uncanny strength. “You answer my question. Do you think I’m a fool? Tell me why I’d do this! Tell me why I’d bluidy bother!”

She stood staring up at him, her neck craned back, shivering with fury. His eyes were as sincere as she’d ever seen them; his amazement at the state of her room seemed perfectly genuine. And yet liars and salesmen looked right at you, openly and honestly.

Her hands were knotted in a double handful of his sweatshirt, either pushing him away or holding him to steady herself, she couldn’t tell. He exuded a faint aroma of whiskey, not at all unpleasant; Rebecca herself must reek of garlic. Why would you bother? Because you want me out of here, she shouted silently. Because if you can get rid of me you can embezzle the Forbes money. “Because if you didn’t do it,” she said, “then someone else was in here tonight. Either someone or… ”

“Something.” He gave her a frustrated shake, as though she were a malfunctioning appliance, and looked over her shoulder at the staircase.

He was frightened. That was why he hadn’t answered her. She didn’t want to know what scared him. “Let me go,” she said. He did.

Wearily, kneading her aching temples with her fingertips, she walked into the bedroom and started picking up her scattered clothes. Michael began to gather the pages of the book. “I fell asleep in the sittin’ room,” he said. “The music was playin’. I didna hear a thing. You took my key, but Dorothy has one. So does Phil.”

“It was in his pocket,” Rebecca agreed. “You don’t suppose he and Dorothy have been helping themselves to the goodies all this time, and are trying to get rid of us so they can continue?”

Michael’s face suffused with horror. He dropped the pages of the book and they scattered in his wake as he bolted from the room and up the stairs. Rebecca waited, ready for anything. A moment later he returned and began to pick up the pages again. “Naething wrong wi’ my room,” he announced.

How can you tell? she wanted to retort, remembering what the room had looked like this afternoon. But that kind of remark wouldn’t help. “So who did it, then? And why?”

“Well it wisna Eric, was it? He was wi’ you.”

“An alibi?” she asked sarcastically. “Come on— it’s only on
Columbo
the best-dressed suspect is automatically the villain.”

Michael shrugged. He found and contemplated a lacy teddy, noting the discrepancy between her fantasies and her prim public demeanor.