Ashes to Ashes (40 page)

“Elspeth had led him a merry life,” Louise said. “She threw over the young man in Scotland to marry him, because she wanted his money. She used his money, too. And then there was Rudolph and the baby, and her madness. That was just too much, I think. The last straw.”

Rebecca visualized Elspeth’s portrait with its dark, self-absorbed eyes. She saw the height of Dun Iain and the open window. She saw the woman falling, skirts fluttering, face set in exaltation and terror mingled. She saw the young servant girl watching in horror, knowing the truth but unable to blow the whistle on the laird of the castle. Louise had been holding baby Katie when Elspeth fell. Except it wasn’t the same Katie, it was a new, improved Katie.

A slightly off-key “Silent Night” jangled down the hall. Lusty bellows from the staff accompanied various cracked voices. The bedroom was so quiet Rebecca could hear the tick of Louise’s clock, so hot, close, and still she detected a faint sour odor beneath that of bath powder. She looked up, her cheeks burning. Sweat sheened Michael’s forehead, sticking down the strands of his hair. Jan bent solicitously over Louise as the old lady lay back, the clay beads dull against the ruffles of her jacket.

“Did you ever get any jewelry?” Rebecca asked. “Or did he only give you those beads and a photograph of what you were promised?”

“No, he never gave me any jewelry. Why should he? I didn’t know anything. I only suspected. Katie got a family, much better than having a bitter old man for a father and no mother at all.”

“And Katherine knew all of this, did she?” Michael asked.

“She didn’t hear it from me. I promised I wouldn’t tell and I didn’t. It was Athena, filling Katie’s head with nonsense about wealth and power.”

“That was Katherine’s claim on James,” Rebecca said with a tight smile. “Not the manner of Elspeth’s death, but that she might have been his sister.”

“Half sister,” corrected Michael. “Possibly. No matter whether her mother was Elspeth or Athena, her father was Rudolph.”

“Was it?” Rebecca stood up. “What if she believed she was John’s daughter? Then she’d have some claim on the estate, wouldn’t she? Did she ever ask you for a deposition, Mrs. O’Donnell?”

“Why should she?” scoffed Louise. “Couldn’t prove a thing. Couldn’t get a penny.”

“So,” said Rebecca, “lacking proof, Katherine resorted to threats and to subterfuge to get what she thought she had coming to her. And yet she dropped out of the picture thirty years ago.”

“If she was still around,” Jan said, “would James have been so vague about leaving Dun Iain to relatives? Who did Eric find, some lady out in California descended from John’s sister?”

“Yes.” Rebecca jiggled the mausoleum key in her pocket.

“Do you want to go to Columbus tomorrow?” asked Jan. She glanced down at Louise. The old lady had fallen asleep. “We could look for Katie’s death certificate. And Dorothy’s birth certificate, for that matter.”

Rebecca exhaled. “Yes, I think we ought to check the records.”

“Occam’s razor?” asked Michael brightly.

“The simplest explanation is the most likely to be the right one,” Rebecca explained to Jan. “All this about babies and blackmail. It has to have something to do with what’s going on today.”

“There is some connection between Dorothy and Katie,” Jan pointed out. “Do you suppose Katie’s lurking out there somewhere directing operations through Dorothy?”

“Ah, the spider in the middle o’ the web. Waitin’ for us to find the treasure, no doubt.” Michael’s smile was as pure as the driven slush.

“If they wanted us to find it for them they’d hardly be trying to drive us out, would they?” rejoined Rebecca. She wasn’t sure whether to scowl at him or smile with him.

Louise twitched and awoke, blinking owlishly. “What do you know about John Forbes’s treasure, Mrs. O’Donnell?” Michael asked.

“He used to say that no matter what happened, he had his treasure. Although he did talk about selling it when the market crashed in 1929.”

“We know,” murmured Rebecca.

“Mr James would say the same thing,” Louise went on, “except I don’t think he knew where it was. Or even what it was. And the Lord knows I haven’t the foggiest idea. Never did.”

“That figures.” Shaking the sweaty ends of her hair out of her face, Rebecca leaned over and kissed Louise. “Thank you. Mrs O’Donnell. We do appreciate your taking the time and the energy to help us.”

“You’ve helped me,” Louise replied. And, to Michael, “You may kiss me, too, dear.” Obediently he did, eliciting a delighted girlish giggle.

“See you tomorrow,” Jan said to Rebecca. “I’ll pick you up at nine. Would you like to come with us, Michael?”

“I’ll hold the fort. Someone has to keep workin’— in the house,” he added quickly.

Jan stayed to fluff Louise’s pillows and bring her more water. Michael and Rebecca plunged out the front door like swimmers into an icy pool. The cold clean air took Rebecca’s breath away. Even Michael zipped up his coat.

Rebecca unlocked the car, turned on the engine, let it idle until it warmed. “And then,” she thought aloud, “did someone kill James? Brian heard his ghost say ‘Don’t push me’.”

“On that evidence I’d believe he tripped over the ghost of Athena’s killer cat.” Michael assumed his slump against the window.

Rebecca shot a jaundiced look at his ear, peeking at her from beneath a wing of hair, and put the car in gear. “Three hundred years ago Scottish courts admitted into evidence statements by ghosts.”

“Oh,” said Michael. “Aye.”

“If James was killed,” Rebecca persisted, “it was because he was about to blow the whistle on the embezzlement scheme.”

“Obviously. The man was ninety-six; it would’ve been easier to let him go in his own time. But can you see Dorothy chuckin’ him down the stairs?”

“People can do just about anything if they think they’re justified.”

“Aye.” Ignoring the personal implications of her remark, Michael said nothing more until they were back at the castle. The parking area was empty. Darnley was prowling around the dovecote.

Once in the kitchen Michael put on the kettle and prepared the teapot. Rebecca leaned wearily against the cabinet. She’d thought she had brain overload before. Now her mind seemed to bulge against her skull, like yeast bread rising in too small a container. If she’d had a home, she’d have gone there, buried her head under the pillows, and screamed.

Elspeth, a pillow, a baby. The Erskine letter. Rebecca started up so abruptly she almost crashed into the mug Michael was holding out. “Cuppa?” he asked, brows arched warily. “Good for what ails you.”

“Will it cure my habit of trotting merrily up primrose paths and finding them only weeds?” She took the mug and set it on the counter.

“Primrose paths?” Darnley meowed peremptorily from the pantry and Michael reached for a can of Fancy Feast. “They’re no so many weeds, lass. Gilt-edged or otherwise.”

“Thank you, lad,” she returned, smiling in spite of herself. She took a paring knife, headed upstairs, and tucked the mausoleum key back into the secretary. Where it should’ve been all along, she scolded herself.

In her room she lifted down the portrait of Elspeth. The crackling brown paper that covered the back was signed and dated: “John Singer Sargent, New York, 1900. Mrs. John Forbes.”

Elspeth’s face was only paint on canvas, a mask made of brush strokes. Rebecca visualized her posing for the artist, flirting and smiling, and Sargent searching for the quiet desperation below the surface. Or perhaps Elspeth had deliberately chosen that sweet, sad face, as an alternative to her reality.

Carefully Rebecca slit the backing, took the flashlight from her bedside drawer and inspected the narrow gap between canvas and paper. Nothing. Well, no one had ever accused John of having a sense of humor, black or otherwise. He hadn’t hidden the Erskine Letter in his wife’s portrait.

Rebecca took the painting and set it in the piper’s gallery, face to the wall. She closed the door on it and went to report to Michael.

Rebecca sat abruptly up in bed, the blankets clutched to her breast. What was that noise? Oh, the dishes in the pantry. This time they had gone at 5:45. Elspeth kept early hours.

Rebecca fell back into the covers. The vertical scan of her mind clicked on— birth certificates, convoluted plots, Jamie, Katie, Dorothy. So much for sleep. Thanks, Elspeth. She crawled from the bed and hit the light switch. Nothing happened.

The electricity wasn’t out; her nightlight glowed brightly enough to illuminate the pallid square on the wall where Elspeth’s portrait had hung. “Don’t like to hear the truth, do you?” Rebecca whispered. She opened her door and looked out into the gloomy corridor. A palpable aura of lavender hung on the draft from the stairwell.

Rebecca grabbed an armful of clothing and scurried into her bathroom. That light didn’t work either. The sound of running water was like thunder in the silence. Quickly she pulled on the silk long johns she’d found on sale in the mall, corduroy pants, blouse, sweater, and socks. The fabrics were chilly against her shrinking skin, but not as cold as the air.

Gagging on the miasma of lavender, Rebecca took her flashlight and crept down the stairs. The chair in the study scraped as if someone were standing impatiently up to see what was going on. At the sound the odor vanished. Rebecca scurried by. She was beginning to think that James and Elspeth were not working together but at cross-purposes. And yet they both seemed determined to protect the house.

Queen Mary’s alabaster features leaped suddenly out of the darkness, caught in the beam of light. Rebecca sprinted into the kitchen and tried that switch. The bank of lights blazed. Through the open door of the pantry the shelves, the boxes and cans, the dishes stared innocently out.

A light thump was Darnley bounding down the staircase, his whiskers at full food alert. Smiling, pleased with herself, Rebecca turned off her flashlight, fed the cat, put on a pot of coffee and started making toast.

A few minutes later Michael appeared in the door. His face looked like his jeans and sweatshirt, crumpled but clean. He smoothed the antenna-like ends of his hair and asked, “Here noo, what’s a’ this then?”

“The dishes crashed again. So I got up.”

“Hell o’ an alarm clock.” He groped toward the stove, seized the kettle, opened the cabinet where the tea canister was. His eyes flew fully open. “I’ll be damned.”

Rebecca turned to see him pluck the tiny jeweled casket from the shelf. “I thought that had gone missing!”

“It had done.” He opened it, turned it over, and shut it as if waiting for it to disappear in a puff of smoke. “If I went back upstairs and started over again, do you think it would help?”

“No.” Rebecca took a linen napkin from a drawer and wrapped the box in it. “Someone took it and brought it back. If we’re lucky it’ll have fingerprints on it. Besides yours and mine.”

Michael groaned and peered dubiously into the tea canister.

A gallon of caffeine later they advanced on the top floor, inventories in hand. “All right,” Rebecca said. “Jan’s coming to pick me up at nine. You can call Warren about the box then. I’ll try to be back by one or so. Probably without any more information than we already have.”

With a glance of long-suffering patience Michael settled himself in front of a cabinet. Rebecca turned her chair away from the black oblong of Elspeth’s window. The pernicious draft nibbled her ankles and slithered up her legs to gather in the small of her back. The glow of the coffee in her stomach flickered like a candle in a breeze.

The cabinet contained more letters. She flipped through them hopefully, the papers crinkling. John Knox, Hume, Mills. Alexander III, that was a good one. Robert the Bruce.

“He was Anglo-Norman, you know,” said Michael.

“Another cherished myth crushed,” Rebecca replied. “And clan tartans didn’t originate until the 19th century, and the pipes are indigenous to Portugal or some such place.”

“Surprise, surprise.” Michael pulled a thick piece of parchment from the rest. “Here, look at this.”

She took it. The last vestige of warmth in her stomach winked out as though she’d been plunged into a snowbank. The hair on her brow stirred in an icy wind, that on the back of her neck tightened in fear.

The letter had been written by John Dalrymple, Master of Stair, in 1691. “I believe you will be satisfied it were of great advantage to the nation that thieving tribe were rooted out.”

“It’s one of the orders for the Glen Coe massacre,” she croaked. Michael’s face swam before her eyes, blurred by swirling snowflakes. “Robert Campbell of Glen Lyon quartered his men on the MacDonalds and then turned on them, violating every rule of hospitality. They killed everyone, even the women and children, who didn’t escape through the snow into the mountains.”

She stopped with a gulp and threw down the paper. Her teeth were chattering. It wasn’t that cold in the ballroom, but it had been at Glen Coe.

“The Glen Coe MacDonalds were bandits and bullies,” said Michael, thrusting the letter back into the cabinet. His face was white, his lips thin. “Campbell o’ Glen Lyon was just the executioner, he didna gie the order. That was Dalrymple, and King William.”

“You’re saying he was just following orders? I thought that excuse went out of style after Nuremburg.” Rebecca paced up and down, trying to force some blood back into her skin.

“It’s always easier tae swallow the simplistic version.”

“You know what Charles II said— there’s never trouble in Scotland that hasn’t been stirred up by a Dalrymple or a Campbell.”

“Damn it, woman, I didna go shoppin’ for a family name!”

“That’s not what I meant.” He knew what she meant, and he chose not to answer. She stood holding herself defensively against Michael’s annoyed glare. The dark apertures of the windows lightened just a bit. Barely dawn, and already they were fighting. Dawn lay gently on the bloody snow… . “Sorry. That letter ambushed me. Talk about the artifacts wanting to go home!”

“Aye,” said Michael, his glare dissipating. “Some o’ them should be in cages wi’ warnin’ signs, right enough.”

Rebecca moved to a cupboard across the room. Her fingers were still cold, her toes numb, the back of her neck twitchy. But she managed to get through a couple of hours of sorting. Her head had just fallen forward in a doze when the phone rang downstairs. “I’ll get it,” she said to the blank expanse of Michael’s back, and he sat up with a start.