The Burning Glass (22 page)

The light at the chapel dimmed and steadied.
The light of Alasdair’s electric torch counted coup along the tree
trunks, leaped triumphantly onto the terrace, and flashed among the
stone-carved pinnacles, making the gargoyles dance.

The holy well was glowing with a pale golden
light.
Inhale
, Jean told herself.
Exhale
. And she
whispered, “It’s not paranormal, it’s . . .”

“A torch in the water,” Alasdair replied.

They stepped forward over the uneven paving
stones. Yes, a flashlight was shining up through the murky water of
the well, casting a spectral glow on the human form sprawled along
its brink, head and one arm and hand hanging into the water.

Alasdair thrust his flashlight at Jean. She
seized it with both hands, trying to hold it motionless, but the
beam of light wobbled back and forth. Cold chills ran down her back
and off her limbs. “Please tell me that’s not Ciara.”

“It’s never Ciara,” said Alasdair. He
crouched over the body, heaved it from the water, and rolled it
over on the terrace.

Big feet clad in heavy shoes. Long legs, a
tweed jacket, a matching vest buttoned over the unmoving chest. A
cloth cap lying crushed on the damp stone. A face turned upwards,
glistening wet, mouth open beneath the shadow of a moustache, eyes
flat, seeing nothing. A bloated face like the Queen of Faerie’s
milk-white steed. A bleached face like Death’s pale horse.

Alasdair’s voice was a whisper at the rim of
hearing. “Angus Rutherford.”

Jean heard what he said. She saw Angus’s
hollow face, drained of humanity. Her mind didn’t comprehend, but
shriveled in denial.
No no no
.

Gently Alasdair touched the blanched wet
throat and tested the waggle of a limp hand. “He’s been dead for an
hour.”

No
.

Standing up, Alasdair reached into his pocket
to produce both the keys and his cell phone. He held the former out
to Jean and flipped open the latter. In the glow of its screen his
complexion seemed almost green. “Unlock the gate.”

Jean’s feet and legs responded even though
her thoughts were caught in a loop,
not here, not now, not
again, no
. . . She stumbled in slow motion up the path, the
flashlight sending a bright beam leaping madly before her—tree,
shrub, boulder, mist, pale and stark and then gone. Alasdair’s
peremptory voice spoke behind her, small in the dark silence of the
night, fading away by the time she reached the courtyard.

Jean thudded across to the gate, tucked the
flashlight beneath her arm and jabbed the key into the lock. Her
fingers were so cold she could hardly turn it. The mechanism
clanked. Grasping the icy iron bars, she threw her weight backwards
to drag the gate open. The scream of the hinges rasped the enamel
of her teeth. The grumble of a dove sounded from the battlements
and then stilled.

Now what? What could she do? Screaming
wouldn’t help. Neither would banging her head against the harsh
walls of Ferniebank.

Illuminated by the lamp on the outbuilding,
the courtyard looked surreal, severe as a moonscape. The splash of
light from her electric torch was diffused and swallowed by the
bulk of the castle. And yet that rosy gleam still lingered in
Isabel’s window, rising, shifting, fading.

She hadn’t walked with stately tread from the
castle to the chapel. She’d run from the gate to the castle as
though the hounds of hell were on her heels.

The nape of Jean’s neck puckered and she
pulled the sweater closer around her body.
Inhale
, she
reminded herself, and tasted smoke. Roddy’s fire, not Isabel’s. A
cozy fireplace at Ferniebank Farm, in the flat, at Glebe House, and
empty chairs before them all.

She and Alasdair had seen a light moving
around the chapel. But Angus—Angus’s body—was cold. Cold as the
grave. Someone else had been there. Someone must have seen his body
sprawled half in and half out of the well. The healing well.

Once again Jean imagined a flashlight
dropping from a shaking hand, this one not ill but frightened. Or
even culpable. Perhaps those hands had dragged Angus into the well
to begin with, perhaps held him down in it until he drowned.

She could barely see the watery glow, the
ripple of submerged light, at the end of the tree-lined path. A
will o’ the wisp, like she thought she’d seen there the night
before. But her sixth sense had never been able to foresee the
future.

The light winked out and then shone again as
Alasdair paced back and forth, keeping vigil over the crime scene.
That was Alasdair’s body cutting off the glow, wasn’t it? It wasn’t
the . . .witness, the person who’d dropped the flashlight . . .
lurking in the trees, waiting to pounce. . . . Jean lunged toward
the path, then twirled at the sound of a car, the roar of its
engine loud as a jet plane’s. With a squeal of brakes, headlights
burst suddenly through the gateway and gravel spattered.

The lights went out, a blob in a yellow
reflective coat hurtled from the car, the slam of the door
ricocheted across the yard. Logan’s face seemed gray and sagging as
dirty laundry.

“He, they, they’re on the terrace by the
chapel . . .” Jean began.

“Into the flat with you. Lock your doors.”
Logan swung his own massive flashlight toward the building in an
arc so broad that Jean dodged. By the time she’d found her feet
again he was pounding down the path, his light licking the trees,
the mist tattered behind him.

Why should anyone bother to say please? Or
tolerate her presence? Switching off her flashlight, Jean plodded
up the steps and into the flat, shut the door, and locked it.

The room looked the same, furniture, dishes,
the book on the coffee table, the inscribed stone on the shelf,
Alasdair’s cardboard box and Ciara’s folder . . .
How long’s
this madness been going on, then?

And Angus made three.

Now, with events pushed from puzzle to chaos,
something should have appeared different . . . Something did.
Wallace’s drawing of the dig was no longer lying beside the stone.
Had it been there this afternoon? She hadn’t noticed.

They’d run down to the chapel without locking
the door. How long had the place been open? Five minutes? Ten? What
if that rattle she’d heard last night hadn’t been the wind catching
at something loose. What if it had been someone trying the
doorknob? Only if that someone had levitated over the gravel.
Although someone apparently had, getting down to the chapel.

For all she knew, all of Ferniebank was
honeycombed with secret passages. Clutching her flashlight like a
truncheon, Jean searched the apartment and found no one. Not even
Dougie. But the panel over the spyhole was in place. She gave it a
rap and then tensed, waiting for something to rap back from the
other side. Nothing did.

She kneeled down to look beneath the couch. A
tip-tilted pair of amber eyes looked accusingly back at her. “If
you had any room,” she told Dougie, “I’d be under there with
you.”

For an eon or two she sat on the floor beside
the couch, her brain feeling like an amoeba, oozing from side to
side of her skull. Then, slowly, she gathered her will. Time to put
the kettle on. No matter what the crisis was, in this part of the
world the remedy was as much the mundane act of brewing up as the
resulting cup of tannic acid moderated by generous dollops of milk
and sugar.

She made tea, and stood at the window letting
the mildly scented steam soothe the tight tendons in her face. Then
she sipped. Each droplet of liquid caramel fell like lead shot into
the pit of her stomach. She flexed and loosed her fingers on the
cup. She was alive. Angus was not. Wallace was not. Helen was
not.

Isabel Sinclair was not.

A second set of headlights splashed the
courtyard. Two policemen scrambled out and disappeared down the
path into the thickening mist. They were from Kelso or even Hawick,
probably. It would take a while longer for the full official
cascade from Edinburgh HQ to wash over Ferniebank.

She couldn’t see the lights in the chapel.
She could lean out one of the larger windows. She could step
outside. Or she could stay put, as ordered . . . There. A dark blur
in the glistening gray tunnel beneath the trees resolved itself
into Alasdair’s compressed form. Jean unlocked the door and let him
in.

He stood hunched as though waiting for a blow
to the solar plexus, downcast face scoured with grief, anger,
knowledge that this, too, had happened on his watch. Wordlessly she
gathered Alasdair, her lover, her significant other, her other
half, into an embrace.

This time he did not resist. His arms came up
and wrapped her waist, and pulled her so tightly into the chill
aura gathered in his clothing that she had to suppress a squeak.
His sweater warmed beneath her breast and hands, and his cheek,
prickly with whiskers and frost, warmed against her forehead, but
the sinews of his body remained taut as bowstrings.

At last his grip loosened and a deep breath
shuddered down into his chest. “Tea?”

“Tea.” Releasing him, she filled a cup,
doctored it, and pressed it into his hands.

He managed to force the rim of the cup
between his stiff upper lip and his rigid lower lip and downed the
restorative in one thirsty gulp. The fault lines in his face eased,
microscopically.

Hating herself for opening yet another one,
Jean asked, “Did you move the drawing that was lying on top of the
bookcase? The one of the dig?”

Alasdair swivelled toward the shelves. “No.
It’s gone, is it?”

“Yes.” Jean couldn’t stop herself from
glancing over her shoulder toward the door. “I didn’t notice
whether it was there this afternoon. Sorry. We left the door
unlocked when we ran down to the chapel, but it could only have
been for a few minutes.”

“I sent Logan in to view the drawing of the
inscription and the remaining chipping, and the drawing of the dig
was there as well. . . . Bloody hell!” Handing the cup in Jean’s
general direction, he darted toward the bookcase and frisked it.
“Aye, the inscription drawing’s gone as well.”

“But Logan’s one of the good guys!”

“Muggins here assumed he was, and so turned
his back.”

“Alasdair . . .”

The phone bleeped. Alasdair grabbed the
receiver off the desk. “Ferniebank.” He cleared his throat. “Aye,
Mr. Elliot, we’re having a spot of bother here—no, no need for you
to—a car driving away at speed?” He cast a sharp blue glance at
Jean. “I’ll have a constable stop by. Thank you kindly.”

“Someone driving away? From where? When?”

“We’ll find out soon enough. Ah.” Alasdair
threw the door open.

Jean watched between the curtains while he
intercepted a Hawick constable returning to his car. The man’s
sharp features working impatiently, he jotted down a note and then
pointed toward the flat. Alasdair straightened, indignation written
in the angle of his chin, but obviously chose discretion over
presenting his resume. He stalked back inside and shut the door
very quietly, a sign Jean recognized all too well. “He said thanks
and now go away, huh?”

“Oh aye. Just as he said down by the chapel.
Officious young pup!” Another car entered the courtyard. Alasdair
leaped for the window again. “Hm. A suit, not a uniform, this time
round. Hawick’s resident D.C., I reckon.”

Lothian and Borders would handle the
situation as competently as the Northern Constabulary, Alasdair or
no Alasdair. Leaving him braced against the windowsill, Jean
retreated into the bedroom with her bag. It was past ten-thirty,
too late to call Michael and Rebecca. Let them have a night’s rest
before it all hit the fan. But Miranda, now . . . Again she punched
in Miranda’s number.

“Good job, Jean,” said her partner’s smoky
voice. “You’ve caught me between acts, catching a whiff of oxygen
in the great outdoors.”

“Here we go again, Miranda.”

“Please tell me you’re not telling me what
I’m thinking you’re telling me.”

“I’m telling you that there’s been a murder.
Another one. We’ve suspected all along that two deaths here earlier
this month were, well, assisted in some way—and even now I suppose
the man could’ve keeled over on his own, except someone was there
with him when he did . . .”

“Jean, you’re breaking up. And I don’t mean
your mobile.”

“Sorry.” She sat down on the bed and bounced
gently, making the bedposts pat the wall. “We saw Angus Rutherford
with Ciara earlier today. He’s not missing anymore. What he is, is
dead. We just found his body lying half in the well at the
chapel.”

“Ah,” said Miranda, her voice trailing away.
“And here’s me, thinking that Ciara’s previous engagement, as per
your message, was hair-raising news.”

“So was someone stealing the inscription. And
. . .” Jean carried on about Wallace and sacred geometry and secret
messages smuggled in harps, Helen and sheep dogs and Flinty Minty
now bereaved, Zoe, Polly, Derek, Valerie, and the ghost, while
Miranda made understanding murmurs. Finally she reached a full
stop.

“How’s Alasdair getting on?” Miranda
asked.

“How do you think?”

“Well then.”

“I know.” Neither of them had to spell it
out. It might not just be Alasdair’s job and Jean’s assignment that
collapsed under the press of circumstances. Making love with twenty
drill teams whooping it up outside the window seemed like a piece
of cake in comparison.

“So why then,” said Miranda, “are you talking
to me and not to him?”

Because I’m afraid
. Of what, Jean
wasn’t sure. Whether he would reject her? Or whether he wouldn’t?
He might interpret her caring as smothering. She might interpret
his self-sufficiency as callousness. In many ways, just managing
was a lot easier. . . . The relationship was not the priority.