The Murder Hole (5 page)

“That I do,” Kirsty returned, picking up her
cue. But this time Jean was the object of the quick glance, one
that barely concealed resentment.

Checking out the entrance hall gave her an
excuse to break eye contact. The vaulted ceiling and stenciled
arcades were exquisitely detailed. A staircase edged by intricate
banisters curved upwards. Beyond it, a doorway opened onto a
library. The gilded letters on the spines of leather-bound books
sparkled in the light streaming through tall windows. Not the
faintest breath of mold or mildew reached Jean’s nostrils, only the
odor of books, potpourri, and baking bread. Miranda could keep her
French perfume. Jean would rather dab bits of this heady mixture
behind her ears.

“. . . change in plans,” Kirsty was saying.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bouchard booked The Lodge, our self-catering cottage,
for their honeymoon. But now they’re after finishing out their
holiday in the main house. Aunt Iris went and transferred your
booking to the cottage. At no extra charge. You’re welcome to take
breakfast here in the dining room and to sit in the library as
well.”

Aunt Iris? Well, well, well
. “The
Lodge is the cottage with the turret?”

“Oh aye, that. Right posh. No extra
charge.”

“It sounds great, no problem.”

Kirsty turned toward a small table. A rack
held not only the usual sightseeing brochures but also a collection
of environmentalist pamphlets. Next to a wicker basket labeled
“Letters” lay an iron key so large it was surely intended for a
dungeon. She handed it to Jean.

The key was heavy, and so cold Jean wondered
whether they’d been keeping it refrigerated. “When will Miss
Mackintosh be free to talk to me?”

“She’ll show you round the garden after
breakfast the morn. She’s mad keen to discuss her work.” Kirsty’s
brittle voice, not to mention the upward flicker of her dark eyes,
indicated that she did not share either Iris’s keenness or her
point of view.

From behind the private door came the sudden
rattle of an old-fashioned typewriter, the clicks syncopated, as
though whoever was hitting the keys was only doing so
perfunctorily. Like any good Gothic house, Pitclachie’s walls did
have ears. Jean, too, pitched her voice a bit louder. “I want to
write about her work, of course, but I was also hoping to discuss
her father’s work and life story as well.”

“Uncle Ambrose, is it?” This time Kirsty’s
complexion reddened to a cherry tinge. “The Lodge—it was a farm
cottage, by the road. He had it shifted up here and fitted out as
his study. All gentlemen had studies then, didn’t they? Places they
could go shutting themselves away?”

She was still protesting too much, Jean
noted. “Yes, of course they did. You’re related to the
Mackintoshes?”

“That I am, my great-grandmother was
Ambrose’s sister . . .” Making a quick sidestep toward the
still-open front door, an evasive maneuver if Jean had ever seen
one, Kirsty called, “Hello there! Miss Fairbairn, Charles and
Sophie Bouchard.”

The Bouchards, a handsome young couple
dressed like fashion models, minced their way in as though avoiding
stepping in dog doo.
“Bonjour,”
said the woman, and the man
added in French-accented English, “How do you do.”

“Hello,” Jean said. The couple glided on up
the stairs, leaning together like twining vines. Ah. Honeymooners.
Emitting a sigh more pensive than reminiscent, Jean turned back to
Kirsty.

She was holding the door open, her stance so
stiff she looked like a taxidermist’s sample. “Thank you, Miss
Fairbairn.”

“It’s just Jean. And thank you.” Feeling like
Eve turned out of Paradise even though she’d barely begun nibbling
at the apple, Jean trundled her suitcase out into the courtyard.
Behind her, the front door shut with a small but solid snick.

The key opened the Lodge’s heavy wooden door,
this one with decorative iron hinges. Jean stepped through the
circular vestibule and past a burgundy velvet curtain shoved to one
side, where it could stay. She wouldn’t need to keep out any
drafts, not this time of year.

She had half-expected the cottage to be full
of quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore, but no, Iris had
done a thorough renovation to her father’s study. The Lodge owed
more to Martha Stewart than to Edgar Allan Poe. A fringed carpet
softened the flagstone floor, and bright printed fabrics covered
the furniture and the windows. A vase of flowers stood on a small
dining table. Shelves held ranks of books and magazines, and a
television and DVD player occupied a discreet corner.

Was that a hint of pipe tobacco below the
pervading flower-and-polish aroma? She wouldn’t have expected
Ambrose’s years in this room to be dismissed with only bleach and
paint. Whether Iris had cleaned away any negative feelings or bad
vibes or whatever pop culture was calling paranormal manifestations
these days, Jean couldn’t say. Not yet, anyway. When she was
pulling away from the house on her way back home, then she’d
say.

She nodded approval at the cleanliness of the
kitchenette and smiled at the old photos of Nessie hanging on the
walls, most of them now proved to be either fakes or mistakes.
Then, leaving her canvas carryall beside the table, she dragged her
suitcase up a narrow flight of stairs to a short hallway. The floor
creaked expressively beneath each step.

The first of three doors was locked. A second
opened into a bathroom. Through the third door she found a bedroom
with a four-poster bed and a dressing table set into the bulge of
the turret. The Bouchards’ loss was very much her gain, although
even someone who was curiosity-impaired would wonder why a
honeymooning couple had retreated to the not so private house.

Curiosity-ridden Jean had no clever theories
about the Bouchards, so she turned her inquisitiveness to Kirsty.
Her—well, “aunt” was more respectful than cousin—Iris had obviously
schooled her in upstairs manners, but her anxiety about
Pitclachie’s downstairs issues kept breaking through. The question
was, were Kristy’s issues Dempsey and his assistants, Ambrose’s
dubious reputation, Iris’s activism, all of the above, or none of
the above?

Jean hoped her remark hadn’t gotten the girl
into trouble, but then, if Iris had watched her interview she knew
about Kirsty’s visit to the expedition. Jean indulged herself while
she unpacked by speculating whether the anonymous letters had been
written on a typewriter.

She was contemplating her own renovations
when she heard voices. Through the windows behind the dressing
table she saw the courtyard and a good portion of the terrace lying
before her like a stage set, with the five ivy-covered stories of
the tower at dead center, ready for Rapunzel—or Kirsty—to appear at
the topmost window and let down her hair.

Toward the house walked a tall thin man who
looked so much like a stork Jean was surprised his legs didn’t bend
backwards—he had rounded shoulders, a long neck, and a sharp nose
supporting thick glasses. A tow-headed little boy bounded along
beside him. Behind them trudged a short, plump woman with a lank
dishwater-blond ponytail and the posture of a pigeon destined for a
pie.

The boy chattered away in the pluperfect
accent of a child who’s not yet watched enough television to
corrupt his native dialect, which in this case was mid-class
English. “. . . sonar readings. . . Nessie . . . dead brilliant . .
. must I have a nap, Mummy?”

It was Daddy who answered. “Yes you must,
Elvis, if you mean to stay awake for the fireworks. It’s midsummer,
won’t be dark enough for fireworks ‘til well past your
bedtime.”

“Fireworks!” Elvis’s enthusiasm made his
voice leap upward an octave. Oh, for the innocent enthusiasm of a
child, Jean thought. He wasn’t saddled by the knowledge that
tonight’s fireworks were the equivalent of the ancient midsummer
bonfires, which were as much fertility rite as celebration.

Mother and child disappeared into the house.
Father peered at the dragon knocker and scraped at it with his
fingernail before following them. The red numerals on the clock
radio by Jean’s bed rearranged themselves to read 4:25.

Almost show time. She cleaned her glasses,
applied lipstick, and ran a comb through her mop of naturally surly
hair, which wouldn’t be achieving any Art Nouveau effects. She
added a light jacket over her shirt and pants combo, signaling that
she was now on duty.

Locking the door, Jean dumped its key into
her mini-backpack and checked out the exterior of the Lodge. A
small skylight opened above the staircase. The window of the locked
room was neatly shuttered beneath the gingerbread-carved eaves.
Well, any self-respecting Gothic household needed a locked room,
although this one was more likely to hold cleaning supplies than
the body of Ambrose’s murdered wife. Who hadn’t necessarily been
murdered.

Jean didn’t see the harshly truncated pillar
of the Pitclachie Stone rising from the stretch of lawn below the
main house. It wasn’t propped up in the herbaceous border along the
terrace, either. She’d look for it later. Right now, on this lovely
afternoon, she was going to deny that either she or this personable
house had ever known death and destruction.

To her right lay the white-painted houses of
Drumnadrochit. Before her lay Urquhart Bay, a deep scoop in the
side of the loch. Boats large and small rode the slow waves, rubber
dinghies darting like insects between them and the shore. On the
far side of the bay, from a neck of land separating it from the
main body of the loch, rose the tower and walls of Urquhart Castle,
built in the days when travel down the Great Glen was by boat.
Boats in the water, towers overlooking the water—surely, Jean
thought, someone would have seen a large creature, one so unusual
its presence would have made waves both literal and
metaphorical.

Slinging her backpack over a shoulder, she
strode off down the drive. A brisk walk would not only wake up the
corpuscles in her brain, she’d earn a few extra calories at dinner
time. The bay and the castle disappeared behind trees as she
descended to the road, but Jean never lost sight of her goal—Roger
Dempsey, who like Ambrose Mackintosh, proclaimed himself a True
Believer.

Jean had to walk only a short distance back
towards Inverness before she reached the road that led down to
Temple Pier, two docks jutting into Urquhart Bay. She stepped aside
as a van paused at the intersection, then eased itself into the
traffic. Its front door wore a sign reading
Omnium Technologies
Organization
. Dempsey’s public, apparently, leaving an
audience.

Several exclamation-pointed brochures in
Jean’s press release lauded Omnium, a multi-national corporation
devoted to inventing and manufacturing tools that increased man’s
dominion over and profit from every living thing that moved upon
the earth, not to mention those things that grew from it, could be
dug out of it, or swam in its waters.

While the looking-through-walls scanner
Dempsey had been touting at the conference would work just as well
for a SWAT team—or so he had insisted—Jean suspected that the
medical and scientific devices were his first love. Through them he
could dabble in archaeology and paleontology. Omnium super sonar
was finding sunken ships from Ireland to Indonesia. Their
remote-scanning equipment set the standard at excavations both
scientific and commercial.

A sports car was parked by the private pier.
Both a Stars and Stripes and a Union Jack waved from the stern of
the clunky barge-like boat tied up there. A youthful male figure
moved purposefully around canvas-shrouded bundles on the boat. A
second sorted through boxes stacked on the dock. A police constable
stood watch, his hands folded at parade rest and his poker face
turning back and forth like a radar dish. “Good afternoon,” he said
to Jean, but didn’t challenge her further.

“Good afternoon,” she returned. So the
Northern Constabulary—read, D.C.I. Cameron—was taking those letters
seriously. Not that one policeman could stop a frontal attack. His
presence was the equivalent of a video camera mounted behind the
cash register at a convenience store. Wondering whether he was the
local plod or a reinforcement from Inverness, Jean started along
the pier.

The man in the black diving suit slipped over
the edge of the boat and into the water like a seal. The other,
wearing a thin red and black life preserver vest, straightened up
from his box and targeted Jean with beadlike eyes. “Eh! Have you
got an appointment?”

“Yes I do. I’m Jean Fairbairn from
Great
Scot
.” She pulled a business card out of the side pocket of her
bag and handed it over.

From the water came a slightly muffled
American voice. “I set it up, Jonathan. Geez, relax already. You’re
as jumpy as a guy tap-dancing in a minefield.”

Jonathan tucked the card into the pocket of
his shorts without looking at it and with one last myopic glare at
Jean, turned back to his box.

Roger Dempsey ducked out of the main cabin of
the boat, a small metallic object in each hand. Jean assumed they
were not both cell phones. One might be a PDA and the other a GPS
unit—not that she knew anything about electronics. She felt about
devices such as computers and DVD players the same way she felt
about a car, wanting only to turn them on and make them go. She
knew even less about boats, except that they figured prominently in
the large bodies of water she found compelling.

Dempsey looked up from beneath the bill of
his Omnium cap and essayed an ingratiating smile, a flash of long
carnivorous teeth in his facial shrubbery. He put down his doodads,
wiped his hand on his dirty and sagging jeans, and extended it
toward her. “Jean! Welcome aboard!”