The Burning Glass (24 page)

A second voice, speaking with the bellow of
the hard of hearing, said, “Get on with it, then.” The speaker
hummed, a computerized voice said, “Thurs Day. August Thir Teenth.
Twelve Past Ten,” and with a click the tape stopped.

“Blessed little to go on, that. The second
voice, that’s your Wallace, is it?” Delaney returned the machine to
Kallinikos, who placed it back on the desk, if not in the exact
spot it had occupied, then no more than a centimeter away.
Producing a plastic evidence bag from inside his jacket, he
inserted the tape, labeled it, and tucked it away. Rather like a
dog owner, Jean thought, would go around with a pocketful of
plastic bags to act as pooper scoopers.

“It’s Wallace’s voice, right enough,”
Alasdair said. “And the date’s the day he died.”

“And the first voice?”

“Sounds to be a man, but it’s a bad
connection, likely from a mobile.”

“What of that noise in the background?”

Jean, loitering beside the kitchen table,
repeated his question to herself. What was that noise in the
background. . . .
Oh!
“That’s a clock.”

“Eh?” Delaney looked around as though he’d
forgotten she was there. “What’s that?”

“The noise in the background of the tape, it
sounds like a clock chiming the first four notes of the Westminster
chimes. For ten-fifteen, quarter past ten, probably.” She had to
say it, even with Angus now no more than an exhibit in a crime
scene. “There’s a grandfather clock, a longcase clock, inside Angus
and Minty Rutherford’s house. It plays the Westminster chimes. I
heard it strike in the background when Keith Bell called me
yesterday. Friday. Whenever it was. Of course, a lot of clocks play
the Westminster chimes, including Big Ben. The sound on the tape
could even have been from a television or radio.”

“Keith Bell?” asked Kallinikos.

“The architect working with Ciara Macquarrie.
She’s staying in the Rutherfords’ guest suite, so it’s not
surprising he called me from their house. That’s not his voice on
the answerphone tape, though. He’s American, for one thing.” An
acrid odor alerted Jean that the crumpets were burning. She jerked
out the baking sheet and dumped them onto a plate. Tea. Milk and
sugar. Marmalade. Spoons. Napkins. She hoisted the tray, only to
have Kallinikos glide like Baryshnikov to her side, take it from
her hands, and set it on the coffee table.

They couldn’t make her stay in the kitchen
now. Jean sat down beside Alasdair, who glanced at her sidelong.
She caught a glint through the arrow slits of his eyes that had to
be approval. So he didn’t mind her butting in when it was him on
the hot seat, did he?

She poured and passed, and for a few moments
the only sounds were those of spoons rattling in cups, doors
slamming outside, and the everlasting crunch of gravel underfoot,
like a large animal gnawing dry bones. “Someone,” Jean said at
last, a bite of crumpet catching in her throat, “has to tell Minty
about Angus.”

“P.C. Logan’s volunteered himself.”
Kallinikos returned his cup to the tray.

“Logan,” Jean repeated. Sour plum. One of the
good guys. Thick as thieves. Again she caught Alasdair’s sideways
glance, not approval this time so much as agreement.

Depositing his cup on the corner of the desk,
Delaney smacked his lips and folded his hands over his
waistcoat-covered stomach. “The message on the tape. Some do-gooder
might have been warning Wallace he needed help.”

“By telling him that he was meddling and that
meddling was dangerous?” Alasdair replied. “May be, but where’s the
danger coming from, then? I’m thinking it was a threat.”

“Speaking of repetition, Cameron, did Mrs.
Elliot or either of the Rutherfords have enemies?”

Alasdair put down his cup and saucer. “I’m
hearing that Roddy Elliot, Helen’s husband, was not over fond of
Wallace. That he blamed Wallace for Helen’s death.”

“Helen was cooking for Wallace, generally
paying too much attention to him,” added Jean.

“The eternal triangle?” asked Kallinikos.

Delaney snickered. “They were quite elderly,
weren’t they?”

“Age has nothing to do with romance.
Relationships. Emotional attractions.” Jean did not look at
Alasdair.

“Wallace was a married man?” Delaney
asked.

“A widower,” replied Alasdair.

“Minty said something about Wallace’s wife,”
Jean went on. “She died and Wallace retired from Kelso High School
and came here. Minty implied that opening the castle and chapel to
visitors was her and Angus’s way of keeping Wallace busy. She’s one
of the people who said that Roddy and Wallace didn’t get along.
Roddy and Helen’s granddaughter, Zoe Brimberry, said the same
thing.”

Delaney opened his mouth. Alasdair put words
in it. “Mind you, that’s all hearsay. Roddy himself is saying he
and Wallace were mates.”

Kallinikos checked another page in his
notebook. “Roddy Elliot. Ferniebank Farm. He heard a car starting
up and driving away around the time you were finding the body.”

“You’ll be questioning Roddy, then,” said
Alasdair.

The chair creaked as Delaney leaned forward.
“I believe you’ve retired, Alasdair?”

Alasdair’s eyes narrowed. “Get off it, Gary.
I’m not threatening your patch, I’m offering my expertise. Only a
fool’d reject help from another professional, but you’re never a
fool.”

The two men eyed each other. Kallinikos eyed
them. Jean waited for one or the other to throw down a gauntlet . .
. No. The armored glove of a gauntlet was already lying there, warm
and fuzzy as a child’s mitten compared to the cold steel in
Alasdair’s eyes.

“Who’s protecting whose patch, here?” Delaney
asked at last.

Alasdair didn’t blink, but one corner of his
mouth tucked itself in. “Point taken. So am I helping you with this
case, now that you’re owning it is a case, or are you cutting me
out?”

“Now that I’m owning it is a case,” Delaney
said, with his own pucker conceding another point striking home,
“I’ll not be rejecting any help.”

“Well then.” Alasdair sat back on the
couch.

Jean wasn’t sure if any tension ebbed from
his body, but a few motes did from hers. She’d almost expected a
duel at dawn on the field of honor, the courtyard at ten paces,
with her and Kallinikos as seconds. She glanced over at the
sergeant just as he looked down at his notebook, eyes concealed
behind lowered lashes.

Alasdair followed her gaze toward the desk.
“The items in that pasteboard box. I brought them up from the pit
prison where Wallace was found dead.”

Interesting distinction, between “where
Wallace died” and “where Wallace was found dead.”

Kallinikos picked up the box and tilted it
toward Delaney.

“The lens,” Alasdair said, “is from his
telescope. Not the sort of thing commonly used in a dungeon. The
wee gold star was lying beside it.”

“I’ve seen similar stars in Ciara’s, Ms.
Macquarrie’s, earrings,” Jean finished.

Delaney’s glance toward the box became a
stare. “Well, well, well. Label that, Nik.”

No sooner said than done. Restoring the lid
to the box, Kallinikos bagged and labeled it and then retrieved his
pen, ready for his next task.

Jean was beginning to wonder if the sergeant
had any siblings who could be persuaded to work for
Great
Scot
, as a contrast to Gavin’s slapdashery behind the reception
desk.

“We’ve got a chain of evidence,” Alasdair
stated, his quiet voice putting a slight but unmistakable emphasis
on the first-person plural. “A chain of incident, you could be
saying.”

With exaggerated patience, Delaney waited for
the pronouncement.

“Mrs. Elliot’s death. Wallace Rutherford’s
death. The theft of the clarsach. Angus Rutherford’s disappearance.
The theft of the grave inscription. And the disappearance of two
drawings from here, this flat, some time today.”

“Both the clarsach and Angus have turned up,
if neither in good condition,” said Delaney.

“Drawings?” Kallinikos asked.

“Two of Wallace’s. One of the archaeological
dig—I found that on the bookshelf—and the other of the complete
grave inscription, which we found in this book.” Jean pulled the
Ancient Monuments book out from beneath the tea tray and handed it
over. “Both drawings were on top of the shelf the last time I saw
them.”

Kallinikos leafed through it, then gave it to
Delaney, who weighed the tome in his hands. “Heavy reading, that,
heh.”

“Two drawings,” said Kallinikos, making a
note. “Who visited here the day?”

Alasdair got up, retrieved the book, and held
it before him like a breastplate. “It was P.C. Logan who most
likely took the drawings, though I didn’t think to ask him about
them just now.”

“The local bobby?” Delaney asked. “Come now,
Cameron, just because you’re thinking yourself too good for the
police force doesn’t entitle you to go slandering those still in
it. You were watching the door all afternoon, were you?”

Alasdair’s jaw shifted and his lips
clamped—Jean could almost hear his teeth grinding. “No, I didn’t
have my eye on the door the entire time. The place was locked up,
though, and Jean was here since—when, Jean?”

“I got back about three.”

Delaney cocked his hedgerows of brows. “Who
has keys?”

“Everyone, including the sheepdogs across the
way.” Alasdair paced over to the window.

“Those keys need collecting.”

“Feel free,” said Alasdair, a marginally more
polite response than “No kidding.”

“Is there anything else?” Kallinikos
asked.

Jean could think of any number of
things—speculations on sacred geometry, comments on architecture
and fine cooking—but not now. Not tonight. Maybe not ever,
depending on what Delaney considered evidence. Alasdair now,
Alasdair never counted anything out.

He said, “Not at present, no. Here’s one of
your chaps just coming up the steps.”

The door reverberated to a knock. Delaney
heaved himself up from the chair. Stowing his pen and notebook,
Kallinikos stood and collected the cardboard box. Alasdair set the
book on the desk and opened the door.

Another be-suited and yellow-jacketed man
stood in the opening. Locks of sandy hair were plastered to his
forehead by what was now a misty drizzle and his cheeks were pink.
“You’re needed at the scene, Inspector Delaney. They’ll be removing
the body directly.”

“I’m just coming.” Delaney ambled toward the
door, stopping short to confront Alasdair. “Here’s your chance to
go telling me my business. Toxicology tests? Oh aye, on all three
bodies as soon as may be. Incident room? Where should we set
ourselves up to suit you? The dungeon?”

“There’s a lumber room just beyond the shop.”
Alasdair’s inscrutable, humorless smile rose above Delaney’s bait.
“Clear away the boxes and all into the castle and it’s yours.”

“And the castle itself?”

“Closed ’til further notice.”

Delaney glanced over at Jean. “Have a look
round, make sure nothing else has gone missing. I’ll have my lot
give the place a quick check the morn.”

Nodding, Jean did not point out that she and
Alasdair weren’t hiding clues in their dirty linen. For all she
knew, their linen had already been carried away by criminals
unknown.

“We’ll take your formal statements the morn
as well. By then the media will be after us like a pack of wolves.”
Muttering to himself, Delaney left the building.

Kallinikos paused in the doorway. “You’re the
Jean Fairbairn writing for
Great Scot?
Grand stories, one
and all.” Leaving Jean gaping—the sergeant had unexpected depths,
not to mention good taste—he stepped out into the mizzle and was
gone.

Alasdair closed the door, locked it, and
stood with his back against it, eyes closed, less expressive than
the granite gravestones beside the church.

Jean thought of the murder of King James I,
how a noblewoman had tried to block the door against the assassins
by thrusting her own arm through the slots intended for a bar. To
no avail, in the end. Keith Bell would enjoy that story. The king
had hidden in the catchment area for a privy, so that his last
breath had been one of slime and stink.

Inhaling a deep breath flavored with nothing
nastier than charred crumpet and cold night air, Jean added
Delaney’s cup to the tray and picked it up. Her bones turned to
spaghetti. Not even
al dente
spaghetti at that, but the
flabby kind poured out of the can. With a clash of crockery, she
plunked the tray down on the coffee table and herself down on the
couch.

Roused by the noise, Alasdair plodded to her
side, pressed her shoulder briefly, then carried the tray into the
kitchen and began washing the dishes—his way of reassuring her, or
encouraging her, or perhaps simply distracting himself.

Jean managed to stand herself up, not without
a groan that was as much mental as physical. Her brain hurt as
though it had been pummeled by large mailed fists. “Dougie?” she
called down the hallway. “You can come out now.”

Unimpressed by her reassurances, Dougie did
not appear.

Jean fluffed the throw pillows and
straightened the bookshelf, tidying the room as much as checking it
over. Nothing else seemed to be gone, but then, she’d hardly
inventoried the place.

Water ran and cups clinked in the kitchen.
She thought of joking about what Minty had said, Wallace and Roddy
going on at each other like stags in rut, and how it was Alasdair
and Delaney who’d left the floor strewn with bits of antler. But
not only was that a weak joke, it brought her back around to Minty,
who had been so sure her husband was coming home any moment, and
yet he had come back to Ciara instead. Jean asked Alasdair, “How
did you meet Delaney?”

“I was obliged to ask for Lothian and
Borders’ assistance in a case three or four years since. He made it
plain I was on his patch and on his sufferance. We got on well
enough, though. I didn’t outrank him then. I don’t outrank him now,
come to that.”