The Burning Glass (17 page)

Instead of saying,
You were right, now
that I’ve broken your shell, I don’t like everything that’s
inside
, she turned away.

“It’s going on for noon,” he said. “The
castle needs opening. You’ve got an appointment.”

“Right.” She didn’t trust her voice to say
anything more. She grabbed her backpack and sprinted out to her
car, the gravel cracking beneath her feet. By rote she snapped the
catch on her seat belt, turned the key in the ignition, drove
across the courtyard, and turned onto the road.

A blast from a horn slapped her back to her
surroundings. She hadn’t looked one way, let alone both, and the
driver of a mud-splashed blue car behind her had had to brake.
Fortunately—
she
, Jean saw, recognizing the abbreviated blond
hair of Valerie Trotter—had been driving as slowly as the narrow,
winding road demanded. Jean pulled into a layby just beyond the end
of the perimeter wall and waved contritely as Valerie accelerated
around her. She returned the wave with a gesture that might have
been dismissive but was not, at least, obscene.

Assuming neither Hector nor Jackie was
flattened on her grille, Jean pulled out onto the road again. In
her viscera she felt the cold vacuum of space, so strong she
expected to see the perimeter wall break up and its component
stones spiral toward her. She expected to see the outbuildings at
Ferniebank Farm collapse and fall, and Roddy himself—there he was,
oblivious to her distress, taking long strides across the
yard—sucked into her black hole. She expected trees to shatter into
kindling and the river itself rise from its bed in great globules
of water.

Alasdair Cameron asked no quarter, and he
offered none. His anger and disappointment were justified. Not the
way he chose to express it, slamming his drawbridge in her face
like that—especially after last night. But it was justified. Her
instincts had nagged her about those lights, but no, in one moment
of cavalier dismissal, she’d betrayed his confidence in her. In the
cases they’d worked together, she had never had the power to make
him fail. And now she did. In the end, though, in whatever end, he
wouldn’t blame her. He’d blame himself.

That choking sound was her own breath.
Another minute and she’d start crying. . . . She had just driven
past Glebe House. Jean hit the brakes, backed up, and dived into
the driveway leading to the cookery building. She was barely off
the road before a police car rolled out of the driveway in front of
the house and accelerated toward Ferniebank, Logan crouched grimly
over the steering wheel like Charon looking for passengers to taxi
across the Styx. What? Was the police station here at Glebe House,
too?

Jean stopped more or less in a parking spot
and climbed out of the car. Then she got back in and stared into
the rearview mirror. Yes, her face was a disaster area. There was
nothing she could do about the lines at the corners of her mouth,
stress fractures from her clenched jaw, no doubt, or her color,
which was closer to fish-belly than blooming rose. She dug lipstick
and a comb from her purse and made what repairs she could.

She slammed the car door, headed for the
house, did an about-face, and hauled the picnic hamper out of the
trunk. One more time. She wended her way across the immaculate
lawn—she imagined Minty down on her hands and knees with nail
scissors—and past the housebroken flowers and shrubs to the front
door. Which opened before she raised her hand to knock.

There was Minty herself, today clothed in a
neat skirt and blouse accented with a cream and coral paisley
scarf. Instead of speaking, she took a step backward, no doubt
quailing from Jean’s glittering eyes. But Minty was made of stern
stuff, and summoned a smile. “You Americans are an eager lot,
aren’t you? Please, come through.”

Oh. She was early. Attempting a similar
smile, Jean held out the basket. “Thank . . .” There was a frog in
her throat. Or a toad, most likely, one of those South American
creatures with poison glands. She tried again. “Thank you very much
for the dinner. It was delicious.”

“My pleasure.” Minty whisked away the basket
and set it down beside a grandfather clock. Her extended arm guided
Jean into a sitting room furnished with all the subdued colors,
rich fabrics, and old-money bric-a-brac as that of a good hotel.
The bay window looked out over the front garden and the road, while
a fireplace dominated a back wall. The marble fireplace surround
seemed out of place, although Jean’s benumbed brain couldn’t think
why.

Rebecca was already ensconced on a soft
couch. That explained the “you Americans.” She was looking fresh,
if not exactly rested, in a flowery frock. Her infant appendage
must be back at the B&B with Michael, since she wasn’t old
enough to hold a tea cup, let alone quirk her little finger while
doing so.

At Minty’s approach, Rebecca pretended she
wasn’t trying to stuff throw pillows behind her back. One good look
at Jean’s face and her grin faltered into a dubious smile.

“P.C. Logan was just here, sharing a bit of
good news,” Minty said.

“The clar . . .” Jean croaked again. “The
clarsach has been found.”

“It was left on a doorstep in Knightsbridge,”
Minty affirmed. “Disgraceful. I understand that it’s been damaged.
I’ve arranged for it to be airlifted to the National Museum in
Edinburgh. They’ll deal with it much more expertly than any London
auction house.”

Jean’s curiosity rose up like a zombie and
staggered forward. “Has the instrument been in Stanelaw all these
years? Ever since Isabel died?”

“In my husband’s family, yes. The tales about
these things make them all the more valuable, don’t they? May I
offer you a fruit juice? Malvern water? Rebecca?”

“Water,” said Jean, barely remembering to
add, “please.” She sat down beside Rebecca, leaned back, and
leaned, and leaned, and finally came to rest at a drunken
angle.

“I’d like some juice, please,” Rebecca said,
and when Minty disappeared into the dining room across the hall,
leaned closer to Jean. “Are you all right? You look as though
you’ve seen a ghost, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Did everything
go all right last night?”

Jean closed her eyes. Her and Alasdair’s
intimate moment had turned into a Middle Eastern wedding night,
with friends and relatives gathered beneath the window of the
nuptial chamber waiting to be informed of the successful completion
of the contract. Well, the contract had been signed, and sealed,
and now . . . Like so many things, getting there was only a battle.
Staying there was the campaign.

She looked around at Rebecca’s worried face
and cut to the catalyst. “We just found the inscription on Isabel’s
gravestone chiseled away. Stolen.”

“Stolen? Oh no! That explains why Logan took
a call on his mobile phone and then went rushing out of here as
though he’d been goosed with a cattle prod.”

“Minty knows, too, then.”

“Minty knows all, sees all.”

“Does Logan live upstairs or something?”

Rebecca lowered her voice. “He’s got a
vine-covered cottage, and pretty much a vine-covered wife, in town.
But he’s thick as thieves with the Rutherfords, you’ve got that
right. He was here when Michael dropped me off, spreading comfort
and joy about the clarsach.”

“Right,” Jean said with a sigh. “Speaking of
ghosts, guess what? Ciara Macquarrie is Alasdair’s ex-wife.”

Rebecca’s eyes bulged. The only reason her
jaw didn’t drop into her lap, Jean guessed, was because she needed
it to exclaim, “What? No way!”

“I wish there was no way, but it’s true.”

“Well now, that’s awkward. I remember when
one of Michael’s old girlfriends turned up at the Rudesburn dig . .
.”

Minty walked back into the room. A teenage
girl carrying a tray tiptoed behind her. Jean had to look twice.
Zoe was stripped of her goth accessories and cosmetics and clothed
in a demure skirt and blouse. Only the stiff black pouf of her hair
still insisted on personality. She offered the tray and the glasses
it held to Jean and Rebecca.

“How are you, Zoe?” Jean managed to close her
hand around her glass.

“Very well, madam, thankyoukindly,” the girl
returned in a rush. As soon as Rebecca had her drink, Zoe bobbed up
and down and fled. Judging by her wary glance at Minty as she
passed, her employer had imposed such old-fashioned courtesies via
a program of intimidation.

“A quick tour of the cookery school, then,
before Ciara arrives?” Without waiting for a reply, Minty strolled
to the front hall and opened the door.

Rebecca stood. Jean hauled her body up from
the couch. Just as they walked outside, the grandfather clock
struck noon. There was something about those reverberating chimes
that rung a smaller chime in Jean’s mind, but with her diminished
mental capacity she couldn’t grasp it.

Minty shooed her guests along a flagstone
path toward the Euro-barn, her royal estate. “Ciara rang to say she
had to deal with a tour group. Her new assistant didn’t appear for
work this morning, the more shame to her.”

“Her new assistant?” Rebecca asked at Minty’s
side while Jean lagged behind. “So she hired Shannon Brimberry
after all?”

Another Brim . . . That’s right, Jean told
herself. Zoe’s older sister who had failed her exams due to the bad
luck exhaled by the bit of inscription.

“Quite so,” Minty replied. “Shannon was sent
down from university. She’s an intelligent girl, more than one
would expect from her background, but she’ll not apply
herself—well, poor Noel and Polly have done the best they could
with those girls. Shannon’s set to be the tour guide here in
Roxburghshire while Ciara deals with her other tours and the
renovations at Ferniebank, trying to help Shannon’s family, over
and beyond her helping us all by bringing so much new business to
Stanelaw. One is quite willing to forgive certain eccentricities,
considering.”

Considering the money involved
, Jean
concluded, and shared a bemused glance with Rebecca while Minty
unlocked a glass door and walked them through a vestibule.

The interior of the classroom was cool, the
air layered with subtle traces of garlic and onion, cinnamon,
bread, roasting meat. Jean realized she was still holding her
glass, one ice cube joggling around in the water. Ice. Alasdair,
the Ice Prince. The Snow King. She drank deeply.

Minty’s mouthful-of-marbles accent, all posh
girl’s school and none of Scotland, rose and fell in Jean’s ears
like the muzak Hugh decried. She was supposed to be writing about
this. She tried to focus. Granite countertops. Cooking implements
ranging from gleaming knives and pots to machines so arcane they
might just as well be torture devices. Bright Italian pottery.
Wreaths of dried herbs, peppers, garlic. Bottles of powders and
liquids of all shapes, hues, and national origins.

Rebecca held up the side by responding to
Minty’s mission statement, something about teaching the local
schoolchildren domestic skills, then making a business of
it—refusing to descend to the lowest common denominator, don’t you
know—exclusiveness are us. Jean trudged blearily along behind. It
wasn’t her glasses that were smeared, but her brain. Reality can be
slippy, Alasdair had said. He would agree that reality could be
slippery without the least paranormal overtone. Like her, he might
get pretty damn impatient with reality.

They walked through a greenhouse lush with
variegated leaves and the sharp sweet scent of herbs—Jean
recognized parsley, rosemary, basil, as Minty carried on about
fresh quality ingredients and evading the cheapening effect of EU
regulations—and then outside past the brick-walled garden with its
bird netting and tomato props and flowers in vast array. Rebecca
said, “This is all very interesting, Minty. Ciara will be sorry she
missed out.”

One of Jean’s ears perked up. Oh yeah. She
was scheduled to interview Ciara this afternoon. Right now, hiking
back to Edinburgh held more appeal. Maybe she could explain that
she didn’t have her laptop, so would have to postpone the moment of
truth, although all she ever did for these things was take notes in
her paper notebook anyway.

“Ciara’s taken more than one of my courses.
And she’s been stopping in our guest cottage since the first of the
month, whilst my husband and I deal with the paperwork generated by
the Ferniebank sale.” Minty indicated a newish one-story addition
beside the main house, which was more of a guest wing than a
cottage proper, not that it mattered.

Jean shared another meaningful look with
Rebecca. Did Minty mean that the damned elusive Angus had
reappeared? Now
that
mattered. Since she was in no mood for
beating around bushes, not even Minty’s Princess Diana roses, she
asked, “So Angus is back?”

“I’m expecting him directly.” Minty turned
not one hair of her tidily coiffed head. Rebecca shrugged—Angus was
an easy-come, easy-go proposition, it seemed.

The driveway and the path passed beneath
Jean’s shoes and they were back at the front door, Minty opening it
before them. The interior of the house seemed still and stuffy and
surreptitiously Jean flapped her cotton coattails.

Zoe was setting the table in the dining room.
“Tell your mother just a few more minutes,” Minty instructed, and
the girl vanished through a swinging door.

“Polly’s here today?” Rebecca asked, leading
the way into the sitting room.

“Yes,” said Minty. “Polly does her best to be
of help.”

“Zoe was saying she cut herself.”

“I insist upon properly sharpened knives,
they’re much safer than ones allowed to go . . .” Minty stopped,
arms crossed, gazing out the multiple panes of the bay window, then
murmured, “Well then. Jean, Rebecca, if you’ll excuse me.” She
glided into the dining room.

Jean looked out of the window expecting to
see the Mystic Scotland van. Instead she saw a small brown car in
the driveway, Ciara emerging from the passenger side and Keith Bell
the driver’s. Aha. Minty hadn’t invited Keith, had she? But here he
was, stowing his camera bag in the trunk while Ciara eyed the
landscape like Caesar inspecting Gaul. Her body language was not as
tense as Jean expected, with the inscription and all, but it was
less easygoing than it had been yesterday afternoon.