The Murder Hole (17 page)

He leaned on the desk, his eyes fixed on
hers, knowing why she was laughing but refusing to acknowledge it
with anything more than a surreptitious twinkle that approached but
didn’t quite achieve a conspiratorial wink.
This is just between
the two of us, mind
.

She plunged on. “Ambrose’s association with
Crowley damaged his reputation, that’s for sure. People around here
think he got away with murder. I’ve only seen the story in some
newspaper files, but the way I understand it, Ambrose and Eileen
were having problems, it was the servants’ day out, so he was alone
with her when she disappeared—well, except for baby Iris, who
doesn’t count. He was a shady character to begin with, and when a
wife disappears, often the husband is at fault. And vice
versa.”

“Was that the only evidence against him?
Their ghosts hardly count as evidence.”

“Hardly,” she agreed. “There were one or two
little things, but the casual attitude of the detectives would curl
your hair. Like the officer in charge not wanting to upset Eileen’s
family by going through her belongings.”

Alasdair winced. “Well then, I’ll have our
archivist find the original reports and transcripts. If she makes
copies for you as well, will that pay you back for your spying, as
you put it? I’d rather have you working with me than against
me.”

“I wouldn’t be working against you,” she
assured him.

“I’m remembering a bit of a competition.” His
voice softened into a register that tended more toward velvet than
gravel.

Jean realized she was leaning forward, closer
to the crinkles that shaped the corners of his eyes and mouth like
subtle punctuation marks. “The only competition, Alasdair . .
.”

The door opened. Jean lurched back. This time
it was she who winced, as her vertebrae slammed against the chair.
Alasdair retreated more slowly, the smile that had been playing
along his lips evaporating before it reached fruition, his gaze
dropping to the desktop.

Gunn set a steaming mug and three plump
oatmeal cookies down in front of Jean. “I’m thinking the biscuits
would go down a treat, since you’ve had no lunch.”

“Thank you,” she told him, as grateful for
his entrance as for the food. What had she been about to say?
The only competition, Alasdair, was between our heads and our
hearts?

Alasdair picked up his sandwich, bit off a
portion of the remaining half, and with a glance that made up in
intensity what it lacked in length, slipped soundlessly through the
doorway. Jean exhaled, feeling as though she’d been holding her
breath the entire time she’d been talking with him—and not because
his agendas were at all hidden. Ambiguous maybe, but not
hidden.

He pulled the door shut but it didn’t catch,
and drifted back open an inch or two. Through the aperture she
heard Sawyer’s bray. “I’m away to collect the old witch at
Pitclachie and carry her to Inverness. Keep her overnight in stir,
that will take her down a peg or two. Unless she’s already spilled
her guts to W.P.C. Boyd over a cuppa and a biscuit, all nice and
cozy. Hah.”

“She’s Miss Mackintosh,” Alasdair told him.
“You will treat her—and everyone else involved in this case—with
courtesy.”

“Are you after solving the case or are you
after winning a Girl Guides award? There’s no making an omelet
without breaking an egg or two.”

“Don’t go wasting my time or yours with that
sort of rubbish.”

“Ah, that’s the way of it, then. It’s rubbish
when I’m doing my job, and heroics when you’re doing yours. If
arresting your own partner isn’t breaking an egg, then what
is?”

Jean’s lips tightened in righteous anger.
That was ugly, reminding Alasdair of the scandal—and its
consequences—in his own past. Last month he’d said he felt Sawyer’s
breath on the back of his neck. Now she realized what he meant.
Alasdair had climbed the ladder of rank because of his competence
and honesty, painful though the latter might have been. But Sawyer
was one of those men who climbed by stepping on the fallen bodies
of others.

Alasdair enunciated so clearly each word fell
like a pellet of hail. “That’s a low blow even from you, Detective
Sergeant Sawyer. In the future you will keep your tongue behind
your teeth.”

A long pause, prickling with frost. Then
Sawyer, lacking a devastating riposte, said in a tone so light it
was mocking, “Oh aye, never you worry, Chief Inspector
Cameron.”

Jean visualized Alasdair’s face, cold, pale,
impassive, and his body, upright and very still, seeming taller
than Sawyer even though he was actually two inches shorter. She
imagined Sawyer, his face red and overblown and his arms swinging
loosely from his shoulders, knuckles dragging the floor. Menace for
menace, she’d back Alasdair any day. But then, she was partial.

Gunn tiptoed toward the door and pushed it
shut, slowly and silently. He was very good at moving silently. He
must have found that a useful survival skill.

Taking Alasdair’s place at the desk, he drew
forward a tape recorder and looked at Jean, his own face pale and
set. She looked at him. No, neither one of them had heard a
word.

“Right,” said Gunn. “I’ve got most everything
here, if you’d not mind repeating a bittie or two.”

She minded, but there was no point in saying
so. Nibbling at one of the cookies, she began, “I came here to
interview Roger Dempsey and Iris Mackintosh.”

Standing beside the Water Horse van, Jean
watched the police car turn onto the main road. Gunn had
chauffeured her back to Pitclachie House. With no one else in the
car, she’d sat up front and eyed reporters and passersby alike from
her height of importance, although she’d restrained herself from a
making any regal waves.

Now she rolled her eyes as much at herself as
at the situation. The details of this case weren’t like the last,
she thought—as though criminal investigations came her way on a
regular basis—but the broad picture was disturbingly so, right down
to that undeniable tug of attraction between her and Alasdair. A
tug that neither of them could bring themselves to acknowledge,
which is why they flirted with it and not with each other. No
surprise there. They were both wounded by broken marriages. They
were both struggling to find a compromise between personal space
and loneliness. Neither of them needed a reclamation project for a
relationship.

Which begged the question, just what
did
either of them need for a relationship?

Jean unlocked the door of the Lodge, telling
herself she could be misinterpreting his just-between-us intimate
moment, let alone that last searching glance. She didn’t want to
make a fool of herself by responding to a signal he hadn’t sent.
And that thought alone told her there was nothing foolish about
this situation, either criminal or personal.

In spite of Sawyer’s visit, let alone Iris’s
enforced departure, the Lodge had been cleaned and tidied. The
bookshelves were neatly arranged, the dishes were washed and
stacked, the bed had been made and the towels folded in a bathroom
smelling of pine cleanser. The locked door, Jean ascertained with a
twist of the knob and a push, was still locked.

So was the door of the wardrobe. She stowed
the toys and the old book, liberated her laptop, and pulled her
cell phone out of her bag. A moment later she was talking to
Miranda. “Yep, it’s me again. I have news and a request.”

“I doubt your news is more reliable than the
sort off the telly,” said Miranda.

That wasn’t a dig, that was a compliment,
“doubt” meaning “expect” in Scots.
I’m going native
, Jean
said to herself, and to Miranda, “First of all, Iris has confessed
to writing the threatening letters to Roger.”

“She never! Where did you hear that?”

“From D.C.I. Cameron, in person.”

“He’s there, is he? What luck!”

Lucky for the case? Or lucky for her
personally? “I agree that she never, but why she said so is another
matter. Not to mention who really did send the letters, and whether
they were trying to frame Iris or whether they were just
careless.”

“As yet you’ve got more questions than
answers, then.”

“So what else is new? And speaking of
questions . . .”

“Oh, good shot,” said Miranda, and to Jean,
“Duncan’s holed a putt long as my front hall.”

“Good for him.” The appeal of golf escaped
Jean, but then, so did the appeal of hitting herself in the head
with a hammer. Her phone to her ear, her laptop beneath her arm,
she stepped carefully down the stairs and waited to be recognized
again.

“Well then, what is it you’re wanting me to
do?”

“Find out just what Roger’s position with
Omnium is. I mean, I know he’s the founder, and he runs a lot of
the research and development, but he’s not actually chairman of the
board, is he?”

“Ah, you’re asking who’s lost the greenback
dollars lying at the bottom of Loch Ness.”

“Sort of. Just wondering about the state of
the Dempsey’s finances—now that sort of question is relevant.” Jean
pretended she didn’t hear Miranda’s whiskey-flavored chuckle.

“Right. I’ll make further inquiries. And now
my ball’s teed up and ready to go flying.”

And fly it would, Jean was sure. “Enjoy your
game. Thanks.”

She switched off the phone and stood staring
at the dining table. It had a drawer. She pulled it open. Yes,
sheets of plain white writing paper lay next to plain white
envelopes and a pen. Was this the same kind of paper the letters
had been printed on? If so, the writer was as likely to have stolen
it from the Lodge as from the house.

Jean nibbled a protein bar from her emergency
stash while she typed in whatever notes about the case and its cast
of characters she was able to brainstorm. No patterns suddenly
emerged. Neither did any way in which she could be in danger,
Alasdair to the contrary, although the problem with danger is that
it usually didn’t walk up and introduce itself before it pounced.
Since running back to Edinburgh and hiding beneath her bed was not
an option—a temptation, but not an option—she dug Alasdair’s note
out of her pocket and dutifully programmed the numbers into her
cell phone. Even though she’d like for him to be wrong, she wasn’t
going to cut off her nose to spite her face. He was only concerned
about her because he didn’t want anyone hurt on his watch. That was
all.

Right
. Jean tucked everything away
again and locked the door of the Lodge behind her. As she crossed
the courtyard, a raindrop plunked down on her head. She looked up
to see the sky almost as opaque as the look Alasdair had sent
toward Gunn, although his eyes were blue with a sheen of gray, and
the sky was gray with a sheen of blue.

Was the dragon-shaped knocker on the front
door going to take on the shape not of Marley’s ghost but of
Jonathan Paisley’s? No. Pitclachie’s ghosts were more subtle than
that. Jean stepped into the house, inhaling its delectable odor yet
again. A soothing odor, she decided, even if its bread component
made her stomach growl. She eyed the closed door of Iris’s office
and the staircase leading upwards into terra incognita. A police
team would be along presently to search the premises, Gunn had
said, which meant Jean did not have permission for overt snooping.
The library, now. The library was open season.

She walked through the arched doorway and
stopped dead.
Oh my! Paradise!

Bookshelves almost completely encircled the
room. Arched moldings rimmed the ceiling. An ornate Gothic
mantelpiece shaded the fireplace. Even though the hearth was cold,
the calico cat lay before it like a supplicant before an altar. He
opened an eye, then closed it again with that typical feline
expression that blended nonchalance with haughtiness.

Today not enough sunlight filtered through
the tall windows to pick the older books with their gilded
lettering out from the newer, paper-covered books. Still, the array
was inspiring. And the glass-topped display case beside the
right-hand window attracted Jean like a magnet an iron filing. She
had taken several paces across the Persian carpet when a voice
behind her said, “Hello.”

Innocuous enough, but that didn’t keep her
from jumping and then pretending she hadn’t.
Nervous? Moi?
She looked around to see Kirsty sitting in a wingback chair next to
a closed roll-top desk, knitting. The light of a lamp made the
half-completed scarf glow crimson and the aluminum needles glint,
but hooded Kirsty’s downcast face in shadow. With her hair piled on
the back of her head, she looked like a proper Victorian miss at
her needlework.

“Oh, hello,” said Jean, with as sympathetic a
tone as she could summon—and she’d be sympathetic even without
Alasdair’s programming. “This is a very handsome room. Was it
designed by Ambrose?”

“That it was.”

“Did he add the tower onto the house,
too?”

“Aye, so he might could watch for the
creature in the loch.”

“And what’s your opinion on the creature? Do
you think it exists?”

“You don’t expect me to go denying the local
religion, do you now?”

Smiling, Jean moved on to a topic that was,
if no less interesting, also less peripheral to her brief as nosy
journalist and police henchwoman. “This room doesn’t look as though
it’s been changed from Ambrose’s day. I guess Iris felt she
couldn’t improve on it. Except to add books, of course.”

“The furnishings are the same, Aunt Iris
says. Except for this desk, it was shifted from the Lodge when Iris
did the place up.”

“So that was where Ambrose wrote his books?
Amazing, isn’t it, how people wrote entire books in longhand? Or
did he use something as newfangled as a typewriter?”

“He had a typewriter. Iris still uses
it.”