The Murder Hole (36 page)

Jean minded—they seemed like such babes in
the woods—but . . .

“Young Brendan was in the bar at the
hotel—the barmaid took special notice—and came away here with Roger
and Sawyer. You saw Kirsty in the window and the constable on duty
saw her in the entrance hall.” Alasdair stacked the last plate on
the shelf.

Nothing like sharing a domestic task to be
companionable. Alasdair had thawed from ice-rimed to merely
refrigerated. His drawbridge might be closed, but somebody was
home. She could see the movement through his arrow slits and murder
holes. “There’s a notebook in the tower room with the pages torn
out,” she said, “That couldn’t have been Ambrose’s book, could
it?”

“It could hardly have been there for seventy
years.”

“No, no, I mean what if Ambrose’s mythical,
mystical papers were really a notebook where he kept his field
notes or whatever. Maybe that’s what Iris wanted Kirsty to hide.
Although I don’t know what else there could be in those
papers—Roger went right to that passage grave. I bet he thinks
that’s where Ambrose found the treasure, you know, Picts using it
as a handy storage dump or something.”

Another grin was threatening to smooth the
arch of Alasdair’s lips, and his expression was askew with
bemusement and amusement both. Yeah, she was babbling. Whiskey and
nerves.

He didn’t babble. He said, “Maybe so, Jean,”
and spread the towel over the handle of the oven. Without asking
her, he refilled their glasses with whiskey and water.

A wee doch and dorris for the road ahead? she
asked herself. For the next item on the agenda? The whiskey had
already loosened her tongue. Now if she could just avoid tripping
over it.

Jean retrieved a platter of fruit and cheese
from the refrigerator and dumped a few digestive biscuits onto it.
“Coffee?”

“No thank you,” Alasdair said, strolling
across to the TV and DVD player. “I’m thinking it’ll be difficult
enough sleeping on your couch the night.”

“I’m just as likely to be in danger during
the day, you know.” Jean scooted her books and papers to one end of
the coffee table and set the plate down.

Alasdair fed a DVD to the player. “That’s as
may be, but criminals are a bit like cockroaches, seen off by the
light.”

“Are you really all that sure I’m in
danger?”

“Are you sure you’re not in danger? Except
from me, that is.”

There was a provocative statement. His back
was turned to her as he wielded the different remotes, but she
tried to read his shoulders, and deduced only that he was neither
braced nor relaxed. She should respond with something eloquent and
profound about the proximity of danger, death, and destruction, and
the benefits of detente . . . Instead, the words spilled out:
“Alasdair, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said what I said last night.
It was rude. It was wrong.”

“No matter,” he replied.

Baloney with mustard
. It did matter.
Big time. But he wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Wiping black
feathers from her mouth, Jean switched off the kitchen light and
closed the curtains against the long, lingering evening light. The
light was on in the upstairs hall—that was enough. The room was
enveloped in the tender shadow of dusk, bright enough to tell an
apple from a grape, dark enough to blur awkward expressions.

Cate Blanchett’s resonant voice sounded from
the television. Logically enough, Alasdair was playing the first of
the three segments of
The Lord of the Rings
. Jean sat down,
not at the opposite end of the couch but not right next to him,
either. “Fruit? Cheese?”

“Thank you.” He chose a biscuit and a morsel
of Orkney cheddar.

They watched the movie from their own
individual islands of space—no woman is an island, Jean thought,
nor is any man . . . Then she didn’t think much of anything, but
only felt. The music, the words, the imagery, sent delicious
shivers trickling down her limbs—well, that was the fiery fragrance
of the whiskey, too, and the sweetness of the fruit, and the
saltiness of the cheese, and the crunch of the cookies. And
Alasdair’s presence, his flesh too solid upon his bones and his
energy field licking her like a cat’s tongue.

If they spoke at all, it was to comment on
individual scenes and debate the adaptation, amiably enough. If
they moved it was to offer each other the platter and set down
their empty glasses. And yet as the movie reached its climax Jean
realized they were sitting close, angled toward each other. When
the first arrow hit Boromir, they flinched as one.

Oh no, there she went, her jaw aching and her
eyes swimming. The emotions tangled not in her esophagus but in her
gut. They whispered of danger and desire, not necessarily danger
from anything physical nor desire for it, and yet the physical was
there. And it could be snuffed out at any moment, by an arrow, by
an explosion, by a fall. “This is ridiculous,” she said, and of
course her voice wobbled embarrassingly.

“Eh?” asked Alasdair, no doubt thinking she
was talking about the movie, where Sam was now floundering in the
river, risking his life to reach out in love and hope.

Her eyes still facing front, she said, “We
can sit on our own little desert islands, or in our castles with
the icicles dripping off the battlements—choose your image—trying
to out-stubborn each other. Trying to out-neurosis each other, for
that matter. But it’s not going to work.”

“Ah,” he replied, his voice more of a purr
than a growl.

“You made it pretty clear last month that I
was the danger to you.”

“You are that. Although I’m thinking now I
was wrong to give you the elbow then.”

Wait a minute
. She turned her head to
see his blue eyes gazing at her steadily but no longer coolly, less
ice than melt water, and his mouth set in its ogee curve, carved
not in stone but in something more pliable. He was goading her.
Moderating the tart words that first came to her, she said, “You
didn’t break up with me last month. There was nothing to break
up.”

“You asked me to dinner. I took that as an
overture.”

“I just wanted to get to know you
better.”

“You’re knowing me better. And I’m knowing
you.”

She looked around the room for inspiration
and saw Aragorn strapping on Boromir’s gauntlets, dedicating
himself to the task ahead.

You didn’t get the cool armor-plated guys
until the next movie, the actors who looked so much smaller without
the layers of protective gear. If she stripped away Alasdair’s
armor, broke his shell, chipped him free of ice, dragged his
drawbridge open, what would she find? Not something small.
Something rich and strange. As for whether she’d like it . . . That
was what didn’t matter. She could trust him. She might not always
like him, but she could trust him. Just as he could trust her.

Jean waited until the credits began to roll,
angelic voices singing of love and loss. Then she said, “I’ve
pretty well proved I’m not much good at relationships.”

“You’ve got a better record than I’ve got. At
least you’re talking to your ex.”

Taking a deep breath that had a slight ragged
sound to it, like a stifled sob, Jean said, “Never mind who we were
in the past, with other people. This is you and me. Now.”

He didn’t reply. He didn’t move.

She looked around at his grave, still face,
now gazing past her, past the television, past the walls of the
cottage. Her heart bungeed down into her knotted abdomen, then
bounced up into her throat. “Alasdair?”

He didn’t turn toward her brandishing a
crucifix, or his warrant card, for that matter, reminding her that
he was a cop on a case and she was no more than an associated
artifact. He smiled, his lips wry, his eyes rueful. “We’ve been
setting out the rules of engagement, I’m thinking, and the
provisions of the treaty. Could we make the running together?”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Oh aye, I reckon it is that.” His hand
landed gently on her shoulder and moved up so that his thumb traced
her jaw and his fingertips brushed the back of her neck, the spot
activated by her sixth sense. Now her usual senses
detonated—rock-steady flesh, the aura of sun-warmed grain, the
catch in his own breath. A thrill fizzed through her body as though
her blood had carbonated.
Oh my
. . . “Mind,” he went on,
“it’s not the done thing to seal this sort of agreement with a
handshake.”

“I should hope not.” She took off her glasses
and set them aside, and laid her palms flat on his chest so that
his heartbeat reverberated up her arms and matched her own. She
leaned toward him as he leaned toward her, like pilots searching
for a safe port in the fog—although which was the pilot, and which
the rocks she couldn’t say and didn’t care.

Their lips met, tentatively. Her thought
evaporated like whiskey in her throat.
Oh my, oh yes, oh
. .
. Tentative became firm became mutually invasive, a delicate
teasing and twining, then a full-bodied exploration, then delicate
again, so that sparks danced behind Jean’s eyes and tremors ran
delightfully up and down her limbs and her chest burned—okay, it
was probably oxygen deprivation, so what. She hadn’t expected,
anticipated, dreaded a quick chaste peck, but this was . . .
Oh
my
.

At last she found her arms wrapped around
Alasdair’s torso, his arms locked around her, her cheek squashed
against his collar, seemingly swapping the same breath back and
forth. His chest was rising and falling as though he’d run a race.
His face was pressed against her hair and she could feel his lips
moving somewhere around her temple.
Please don’t get
regretful
, she pleaded silently.
Please don’t make it all
seem foolish. Just hold me, now, for the moment.

He didn’t say anything. He held her. She’d
never thought his taut body could actually yield, surrender to such
an embrace, but there he was, and there she was . . . Somewhere
behind the piping of her blood in her ears, the drumming of his
heart in his chest, and the music still flowing from the DVD, she
heard another rhythm. Footsteps, walking down the upper
hallway.

Slowly Jean extracted herself from Alasdair
as he extracted himself from her. They exchanged a careful,
questioning look footnoted with exasperation, and turned toward the
staircase just as the voices began to speak.

The woman said, each word clear as a whiskey
glass etched with thistles and heather, “You’ve got no heart,
Ambrose, and no stomach either. You’re playing the laird, with
right of pit and gallows and all, and I’m no more than a sheep to
you.”

The man’s voice, like his daughter’s, was
trained in proper English. “How impertinent! I’m caring for you, as
is my duty, and you throw my family name in my face.”

“Ah, this for your family name! And your duty
as well. You dinna care, not for her, not for me, only for him, the
Devil take him and good luck to them both!”

Alasdair’s shoulder against Jean’s stiffened
as she tensed against him. She didn’t need her glasses to see the
shadows of two people extending along the staircase, their feet
thumping quickly down the steps to the landing. She was in the
lead—thick-heeled shoes, a sack-like dress, long reddish-gold hair
frilling over her shoulders, a square face. She turned back to the
lantern-jawed man in his three-piece suit, who stopped on the step
behind and above her. “A divorce, I’m thinking, there’s grounds
right enough.”

“How dare you?” he retorted, and lifted his
hand as though to strike her.

She dodged, and lost her balance on the
narrow step. For a long breathless moment she seemed to hang in
mid-air, resisting gravity, both her expression and his changing
with exaggerated slowness from anger to surprise to terror. Ambrose
grabbed for her hand, too late.

She screamed, a short sharp outraged shriek
that made both Alasdair and Jean jerk back. She fell. Her body
crashed from step to step and against the balusters, limbs jerking
every which way, and landed at the foot of the staircase in a heap,
a very still heap, like a puzzle of clothing and body parts
disassembled by some giant hand. Blood trickled from beneath the
bright hair and over the flagstones of the floor, past the splayed
left hand with its shortened forefinger.

“Oh God, no, no, God, no!” Ambrose howled,
and ran down the stairs.

The front door flew open and the velvet
curtain whisked aside—or the shadows of the door and curtain,
rather, like shapes in smoke against the actual objects. And a
second woman stood there, her flowered skirts settling around her
dainty form, a scarf clutched in her petite hand, her bobbed dark
hair framing a sharp face struck with horror. Her gaze moved from
the broken body to Ambrose’s trembling form. And her expression
segued from horrified to something sly and fox-like.

They were gone, all three of them. The velvet
curtain stood open, the door was shut and locked, and the staircase
gaped like an empty gullet. The aroma of perfume, of coffee and
smoke, of blood, of age and mortality, filled the room and then
dissipated.

With a cough, Jean exhaled both the odor and
the breath she just now realized she’d been holding. She subsided
against Alasdair. “You were right. Edith is the one who died.
Eileen was outside, in the summerhouse, maybe, heard her fall and
came rushing in to see what had happened.”

“Oh aye.” Alasdair’s body was stiff,
withdrawn into itself, no longer yielding to her touch. His arm
wrapping Jean’s shoulders seemed affectionate and yet
perfunctory.

“I should have noticed the first time I heard
the rhythm of their voices. It was like hearing Jonathan and
Brendan talking. I could tell their accents were different without
hearing the actual words. Ambrose spoke Oxford English. Eileen was
American. Edith was a Scot.”