Ashes to Ashes (42 page)

The silence was shattered by Michael galloping onto the landing. “It’s you.”

“Who else? Dorothy and Phil aren’t due again until tomorrow.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “James has been trampin’ up and doon the bluidy stairs all bluidy mornin’.”

“Even the ghosts are getting nervous,” Rebecca said, frowning.

“Warren says he’s right pleased tae have the box back again, we must’ve overlooked it, thank you very much. If we really insist we can take it into the lab in Putnam, but why bother?”

“Great.”

Michael started to go, caught himself and came back. “Did you find anything in the Records place?”

“We found that Dorothy isn’t related to Katherine Gemmell,” Rebecca answered, not looking at him.

“Ah. I see. Well then.” He went back upstairs.

Rebecca found Darnley asleep in a patch of sunlight on her bed. She sat down and stroked his soft fur. “No,” she said, “I can’t tell anyone else about Eric until I’ve talked to him. It just wouldn’t be fair. If Michael has some things to work out alone, then so do I.”

Darnley regarded her with skeptical yellow eyes, as though asking just what truth she really wanted.

The sky had an ominous tint. It was still blue, but it was no longer deep; it arched above Dun Iain like a lid. The icy wind left a metallic tang in the back of Rebecca’s throat.

She hurried past Dorothy’s and Phil’s cars into the house. Her first stop was her bathroom, where she scrubbed black ink from her fingertips. The Putnam police had looked at her with thinly veiled amusement when she’d marched in, handed over the jeweled casket, and asked them to dust it for fingerprints; Warren had never told them she was coming. After they’d taken her prints they pointed out with the patient reasonableness reserved for children and the mentally impaired that they’d need prints from everyone else at Dun Iain as well. Maybe they’d get back to her on Monday. Maybe later in the week. She’d barely made it outside before she blushed with rage and embarrassment.

There, her fingertips were pink again. Rebecca got her notebook from her room and glanced up the stairs. Michael must be on the sixth floor, doing more than his share of the work. From the sound of water running and the odor of furniture polish she deduced Dorothy was on the fifth floor. Phil was banging the plumbing on the fourth floor, the pipes reverberating like gongs.

Her mouth tight, her shoulders stiff, Rebecca went into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of tea from the still warm pot, and placed the telephone and the phone book on the table. She sharpened her pencil, opened a fresh page in her notebook, and made the easiest call first. “Hi, Jan!”

“How’re you doing?” Jan responded.

“I haven’t committed hari kari with my nail scissors yet. The mood I’m in I’m much more likely to commit the Dun Iain nail scissor massacre.”

“Spare the cat, at least. What can I do for you?”

“Tell me if you know whether Eric is doing any legal work for Louise.”

“No, she’s got somebody else. Why?”

“Just wondering if he had some influence over what she told us the other day. Grasping at straws, I’m afraid.”

“If I see any answers on sale at the Big Bear I’ll get some, okay?”

Rebecca laughed. “Thanks, Jan. Check with you later.”

The next number was that of the Ohio Historical Society. She wended her way through three different extensions until she ascertained that the diaries and scrapbooks had indeed arrived safely. She wrote, “OHS okay”.

Michael strolled into the kitchen, warmed up the teapot with hot water from the kettle, refilled his mug, and strolled out again. From the corner of her eye Rebecca registered his inquisitive glance. He was just like a cat, auburn whiskers always at the alert.

Rebecca dialed Information, wrote down a number, and dialed again. A voice answered, “Sotheby’s New York.”

Again Rebecca persisted through several extensions until she found someone who either knew what he was talking about or cared what she was asking. “19th c. Edinburgh silver work,” repeated the male voice. “Is that the piece that was recently stolen from some place in Ohio?”

“That’s where I’m calling from,” said Rebecca. “I’d like to know if anyone’s offered the mazer for sale through you.”

“Oh! You must be from the insurance company.” Rebecca didn’t enlighten him. The voice went on, “Since we’ve been notified that the piece was stolen, we would, of course, let you know if it came in. There’re collectors who could’ve been contacted privately, but I’m not at liberty to divulge their names.”

“Of course not,” said Rebecca through her teeth. “Thank you anyway.” Her pencil jerking with disappointment she wrote, “Sotheby’s? Collectors???”

She poured herself more tea and checked her watch. Barely past noon. Eric was coming at five. Her chest bubbled like ginger ale— let’s get it over with, the accusations, the explanations, the cold hard looks. Her heart was a lead weight suspended amid the bubbles— no, let it go, don’t confront him.

Don’t confront him? No way. Her own whiskers were twitching like mad. She dialed again. “Benjamin Birkenhead, please. Rebecca Reid at Dun Iain.”

The receiver emitted insipid music and she held it away from her head. Then Ben’s voice boomed, “Miss Reid?” so loudly she hardly needed to move it closer. “What can I do for you, honey?”

Reminding herself to keep her voice sweetly breathless, Rebecca asked him her rehearsed question: her nephew Joey was just out of law school, and Eric always said how much he enjoyed working for such a prestigious firm. “How did he get his position with you?”

Just as she’d guessed. Punch the right buttons and Ben would respond like a candy machine depositing a Snickers bar. “Why, honey, Eric called us to see if there was an opening. He had such glowing references from the firm in Los Angeles where he’d interned we told him to come for an interview.”

“At his own expense?”

“Sure thing. Nice to see a young buck with such enthusiasm. He even agreed to a clerk’s salary to begin with, just to work for us. Of course we’ve raised his salary since then. He does good work, and makes such a fine appearance for the firm.”

You give him every job associated with a woman, right? Rebecca asked silently. She wondered just how far Eric was in debt, raise or no raise.

“If your nephew would like an interview,” continued Ben, “I’ll have my secretary set one up. You come with him. There’s a little place near here that serves a real businessman’s lunch, two martinis and a bloody T-Bone.”

Rebecca gagged. “Why thank you. How kind. I’ll write and tell him. I know he’ll be very grateful.” Even if thoroughly bewildered; her nephew Joey was only ten years old.

Birkenhead hung up. With the receiver still at her ear Rebecca gulped tea, washing away the sour taste of her own lies. There was a fine distinction between lying and simply not telling the truth, but she wasn’t up to fine distinctions. She was infected with Dun Iain’s virus of dishonesty.

A distinct click broke the silence in the receiver. Someone had just hung up the fourth floor extension.

Rebecca threw down the phone, catapulted out of her chair and raced up the stairs. She almost collided with Dorothy between the third and fourth floors. The housekeeper’s pale, dull eyes barely registered Rebecca’s suspicious glance.

Phil was disassembling the sink in the fourth floor bathroom. Michael was scrutinizing a Raeburn portrait in the stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors, one of Elspeth’s crystal bottles in his hand. Rebecca turned his curious look with a glazed grin, spun, and thundered back down to the kitchen. Could’ve been any of them. Great.

She wrote “BB&D!!!” on her paper and surrounded it with lightning bolts. Then she dialed the sheriff’s office but hung up before the dispatcher answered. Warren might not be guilty of anything more than a too-casual attitude, but she wasn’t convinced.

Swearing under her breath, Rebecca turned to a fresh page and wrote down everything she’d discovered. Little enough, she thought, tapping her pencil against her teeth. But she needed all the ammunition she could get. If Eric griped about all the long distance calls on the phone bill, tough. It was his own fault. And once she’d trusted him.

The odor of cigarette smoke wafted from the entry. The water pipes gonged. Darnley prissed in, sniffed around, left. Someone walked down the stairs and out the front door whistling the derisive “Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waulkin’ yet?” Ah yes, it was time for the mail. Michael was helpful, to a certain extent. To whatever extent she could trust him.

Don’t start that again, Rebecca ordered herself. She stamped up to her room slapping her notebook against her thigh. Her mind felt like an eggbeater, thoughts, images, fear, and frustration whirring frantically but never meshing.

Phil passed her as she went on up the stairs, touching his cap like a medieval serf. “I’ll be leaving now, Miss Reid. See you Monday.”

“See you Monday, Mr. Pruitt. Thank you.”

Dorothy was standing on the fifth floor looking at John Forbes’s portrait, the painted features showing more animation than the living ones. She said to Rebecca, “I forgot to bring your dinner tonight, sorry.”

Rebecca said politely, “It’s very good of you to think of us, Mrs Garst. We’ll manage until next week.”

“Have a nice weekend,” said Dorothy like an automaton. She shuffled off down the stairs.

Michael had disemboweled some of the smaller rooms on the sixth floor, leaving boxes strewn across the floor. The metallic sunshine blanched the room so that it resembled an overexposed photograph. The claymore, propped by the fireplace, shone with a cold steely gleam. The wind wailed around the turrets and on the roof something loose banged an uneven rhythm. The place suited her mood. Rebecca sat down, picked up the inventory, and chose a box.

Slow footsteps clomped far below, on either the front or the back stairs. “Hello, James,” she said. “I’m beginning to understand why you never married, with Elspeth and Athena, Katie and Dorothy setting such fine examples of womanhood.” She glanced warily at the slitted window. Silence. The ghosts had been silent recently. Saving up for something, no doubt. Maybe Rebecca herself would explode, just to amuse them.

That set of steps bounding toward her was Michael’s. “So many cars were comin’ oot the drive I doot you’d turfed them all oot good and proper.”

“How’s your girlfriend today?” Rebecca asked.

“The postie? She’s on holiday. This one’s a man. Didna ken a word I was sayin’.” Shaking his head incredulously he threw down a collection of form letters and ads and went back into the smaller rooms.

Rebecca turned the pages in the inventory. Box 576— all right! She lifted a finely tooled wooden box from the large cardboard one and opened it. Yes, just as the inventory said. It was Mary Stuart’s gold rosary. The filigree beads tingled between her fingers, and the crucifix was oddly warm.

Rebecca crouched beside the box, barely able to breathe. In a piece of cloth was a prayer book. When she opened the brass latches and turned the pages the 400 year old illuminations leaped out at her, fresh and vital. The cloth was Mary’s veil, its history embroidered around the edges in Latin: “A nobiliss matrona… . “”My God,” Rebecca breathed. Mary had held these things at her execution.

Rebecca sniffed. Crybaby. She was just so tired. Her back curved, weighted down with despair, with a life of struggle so futile that death was welcome. Mary, too, had lost her child; he’d been taken away from her and raised to hate her. For twenty years she’d been imprisoned in alien England, ill and reviled, and still had knelt before the executioner like a queen.

The floor was hard beneath Rebecca’s knees. The cloth, the rosary, the book tingled in her hands. The Hall at Fotheringhay was cold. Mocking faces looked at her, voices buzzed and were then stilled by awe and respect. No, not despair. Desperate hope, the light in a long tunnel. Not an end but a beginning. Faint and faraway a woman’s voice said, “In manus tuas, Domine, confide spiritum”—”Into your hands O Lord I commend my spirit”. The lips of Mary’s severed head had continued to pray for a quarter hour after her death.

Something touched her shoulders and Rebecca started up with a gasp that was almost a scream.

Michael was on one knee, looking into her face, his brows puckered with sympathy and alarm. Cautiously he took crucifix, book and veil from her hands, checked them against the inventory, and sat down on the floor, eyes bulging.

Rebecca watched, half crying, half laughing at how despair, terror, and elation swept his features just as they had hers. At last he laid the items reverently back in their box and cleared his throat. They looked at each other, dazed. “Is that the Forbes treasure?” Rebecca croaked.

“Canna be. James had it on the list. And John said he’d made a reliquary for the treasure from Elspeth’s jewels.”

“It should be the treasure. Romantic Mary and all.” Again tears spilled from Rebecca’s eyes and down her cheeks. No— this was a torture of embarrassment. But the tears were the fluid drained from a sore, relieving pain and fear. She cried, sputtering apologies. Michael’s hands touched her again. His supple fingers worked the quivering fibers of her back and neck until they relaxed and nestled into his grasp. “Ah well,” he said, “there’s naething wrong wi’ a bit o’ romance. And a good greet if it’ll ease your mind.”

Rebecca leaned back into the sanctuary and the danger of Michael’s arms. This was what she’d wanted, her mind hiccuped, the reassurance and support of which sex was so often only a counterfeit. But she and Michael were both too good at, if not lies, then certainly half-truths.

She rested, her shoulders against his chest, his arms locked around her waist, her hands on his slender wrists. No, she wouldn’t turn toward him, even as his cheek pressed against the side of her head and his lips touched her ear. “Rebecca, whatever happens, I want you to know… ”

She waited, each deep breath following quietly on the next. He rocked her in his arms and murmured, “Never mind, lass. Never you mind.”

With a shuddering gulp and a choked “thank you” she put his arms aside and sat up. He let her go without protest. She pulled out a tissue, mopped at her face and retrieved her wandering contact lenses. She must be a mess, her eyes red, her nose running.